The Sauniatu of Now-a-days

The Sauniatu of Now-a-days By John Q. Adams, President oj the Samoan Mission

How would you enjoy a glimpse in detail, with all the ac- — companying picturesque features of a South Sea Zion the gath- ering spot of the natives of the Samoan group? The Sauniatu of yesterday was the Sauniatu of today in swaddling clothes. Only he who has threaded, in dead silence, the vast shades of a South Sea wilderness can form a partial conception even of its magnitude. To leave the friendly openness of the coast, where are strung out the balance of native villages, and strike into the deep interior of the forest, was a move call- ing for the highest type of implicit obedience; yet, a handful of faithful Saints, casting aside every vestige of custom and tra- dition and environment of bygone ages, set their faces reso- lutely to the interior and soon were energetically swinging axes in the effort to daily enlarge, by slow degrees, the small clear- ing that in time was to be an oasis in a sea of surrounding jungle. More we shall not say, as our own grandparents also founded a Zion. Towards this Mecca, then, our compass of investigation di- and in a typical Samoan rowboat we paddle from the rects us, humble customs wharf, one Friday afternoon late, and nose our way seaward by jerk of oars. Our crew consists of but seven where we should have twice as many, and two of these are grown girls who live with the family of the mission president. With- out pause, we steal by the rotting hulk of the German man-of- war, Alder, driven on the reef close in-shore by the terrific hur- ricane of 1888. In like manner do we skirt a projecting reef, jagged and black, over whose porous surface the swell of the sea churns into milky foam as we row along just beyond its reach. Rounding the first point, the water shallows as we hug the beach, until there is outspread to our gaze, on the bed of the eea, a magnificent assortment of coral, sea weed and darting ani- mal life. Soon a finely laid-out grounds and imposing built house swing into view but fifty yards away, and by the Union Jack lazily afloat in the breeze, we correctly surmise it to be the home of the British Consulate. Likewise the Stars and Stripes aloft on the adjoining plot indicates that Uncle Sam's representative is to be found there.

SAUNIATU OF NOWADAYS 63

Thence we leave the shore and strike straight across the next bay to the promontory, a mile ahead, for any Samoan island is a series of bays and promontories all along its coast. We endeavor to follow the deeper course of the reef water- roadstead by the iron stakes inserted at intervals in the coral but a scant yard beneath the surface at best and now protruding in places. Despite the utmost vigilance of both lookout and helmsman, in the semi-twilight of approaching night, our keel occasionally grates on the rough coral, even coming to a dead stop at times. At such moments our crew take promiscuously to the water, thus lightening the cargo, and push the boat into deeper water, after which they clamber nonchalantly aboard and resume their stations at the oars. On one such occasion our two girls step into shallow water to pick up some desirable sea food. Before they can regain the boat we strike deeper water and they are forced to wade to their necks and then finally swim. Their white dresses cling drippingly to their shivering bodies during the balance of the trip, and they fail to see the joke, although frequently reminded by the boys! What a night and what a journey! At times away out at sea, in the blackness the dim outline of the island can scarcely be detected. The lights of the villages sink and rise as we go up and down on the heavy swell, and the dark clouds gather at one point in the heavens as a sure precursor to rain, while stars twinkle in full splendor elsewhere. Our crew croons a soft native boat song and our three young children, one but a baby, take it all in with intense interest until heads nod sleepily. Did ever Utah-born babes have a more extraordinary bed? We gnaw away at dry bread for supper and then recline to stave off approaching seasickness. At midnight we pull up on the sandy beach at Fusi, our debarkation point, and are carried ashore on the backs of our oarsmen. We soon stretch out for slumber on a board floor, with a thin mat for a mattress, and a mosquito net that admits any number of the pests but from which they find it impossible to escape. We are glad to see and hear signs of the coming day, and shortly after seven we set out afoot on the inland trail of iour or five miles, the first part of which leads up hill at a seven per cent grade. Our tropical friend, the rain, accom- panies us enroute, as if we couldn't possibly wet our clothing sufficiently with perspiration! At the summit we rest under the half-way mango tree, thence tramping into Sauniatu in an hour along the only three miles of straight road in Samoa. What a welcome sight to come suddenly upon it all, this snug little "Mormon" village away up in the close embrace of an extinct volcanic crater! As we cross the river a much appre- ciated Elders' house looms up, but we must not waste time in de-

64 IMPROVEMENT ERA

tails, and Inn rv to a finish we must, wish as we may to dwell on each distinct feature al Umij.m1i. We sit down to a table laden with native food, than which nothing could appear more de- irable. At times weeks pass without a sign of bread or other foreign food except perhaps a little jam or rice. Each family takes its turn in bringing in a basket of food. Native houses line the several paths as we go about the vil- lage, each fairly smothered in dense tropical verdure. In a mass are thrown together cocoanuts, breadfruit, pineapples, oranges, bananas, lemons, limes, passion fruit and dozens of beautifully imaged and tinted shrubs, vines and trees, some in flower and all in full dress the year around. We are made welcome and shown every courtesy wherever we go, as "hospitality" is the Samoan watchword. Warm is the climate, and even warmer the affections of the big-hearted Lamanites here residing. No poor, no rich, yet all enjoying plenty. Let us wend our way to the school. In four separate houses, three of them native, groups of children are seated on mats on the floor, chattering back answers to questions from teachers, brown and white. We apply a variety of tests to ascertain if their learning is of the parrot order, and find that they can go up or down the multiplication table, and backward as well as forward along English-framed sentences. And so eager are they to reply in response to every test that it is nothing short of in- spirational to be fortunate enough to have their training in charge. The coming generation here will have adopted the ways and the learning of their white tutors. At Sunday School we come in contact with equal diligence, in study and recitation. Sunday is the day of days to our village here. Think of attending a seven-thirty service, you in Utah who can scarcely muster pluck to hear the ten-thirty beginning. From then on until well along in the night, meetings of various organizations are tolled off by the big bell in the fine, new, commodious cement church. Rarely is there a single absentee from any service. All are anxious to participate, and the ques- tion with the elders is not in securing speakers, but to hold them in check. In each class we find that the plan of salvation is, as a rule, correctly interpreted by competent native class leaders of long experience. A most remarkable declaration may be truthfully made re- specting this island gathering place. The tobacco habit fastens its clutches upon native victims at an extremely early age, and often we see children not nearly in their teens puffing away a: a ludicrously long cigarette made by themselves from native- grown tobacco wrapped in a piece of dry banana leaf. It is and has been the universal custom from time immemorial, and yet our people in Sauniatu responded when the demand was made,

THE SAUNIATU OF NOWADAYS 65

and the presence by sight or scent of tobacco in the village is a rarity, invariably from strangers! Where is there a white com- munity that can lay claim to such Word of Wisdom observance? In a test held between our brass band and that of an outside village, the latter retired, fatigued and breathless, early in the evening, while our boys continued at their instruments until well into the night! One more paragraph and we are done. We note the absence of many a familiar face of a dozen years back, and are welcomed by but a handful of the original band of pioneers of but sixteen years ago. Crossing the river and gaining the graveyard, we are confronted abruptly by the reason written in tombs that dot the earth in little mounds of pebbles fringed by larger lava stones. As the writer stood silently viewing the city of the departed, our most faithful Saint and veteran of the village since its inception, came to his side and pointed out the last rest- ing place of this and that brother and sister or child who went down in the influenza epidemic of a year ago, like grain before the sickle, some of them being buried in their own dooryards and others in whatever place they dropped dead. Heart rend- ing incidents were recounted in simple, touching style, and after a mental review of the horror and helplessness of it all, one is lost in wonder that even the reinant survived that we now find. Strangely like old Chingagook of Cooper's tale, appeared our old Lamanite chieftain, Opapo, as he stood in that quaint native cemetery that day and swept his trembling arm from point to — point one of the links that connects the past of Sauniatu with its present. Apia, Samoa, April, 1920

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