Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LATE OPERATIONS OF THE FRENCH AT THE
MARQUESAS--PRUDENT CONDUCT OF THE ADMIRAL--SENSATION PRODUCED BY
THE ARRIVAL OF THE STRANGERS--THE FIRST HORSE SEEN BY THE
ISLANDERS--REFLECTIONS--MISERABLE SUBTERFUGE OF THE
FRENCH--DIGRESSION CONCERNING TAHITI--SEIZURE OF THE ISLAND BY
THE ADMIRAL--SPIRITED CONDUCT OF AN ENGLISH LADY

IT was in the summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands; the
French had then held possession of them for several weeks.
During this time they had visited some of the principal places in
the group, and had disembarked at various points about five
hundred troops. These were employed in constructing works of
defence, and otherwise providing against the attacks of the
natives, who at any moment might be expected to break out in open
hostility. The islanders looked upon the people who made this
cavalier appropriation of their shores with mingled feelings of
fear and detestation. They cordially hated them; but the
impulses of their resentment were neutralized by their dread of
the floating batteries, which lay with their fatal tubes
ostentatiously pointed, not at fortifications and redoubts, but
at a handful of bamboo sheds, sheltered in a grove of cocoanuts!
A valiant warrior doubtless, but a prudent one too, was this same
Rear-Admiral Du Petit Thouars. Four heavy, doublebanked frigates
and three corvettes to frighten a parcel of naked heathen into
subjection! Sixty-eight pounders to demolish huts of cocoanut
boughs, and Congreve rockets to set on fire a few canoe sheds!

At Nukuheva, there were about one hundred soldiers ashore. They
were encamped in tents, constructed of the old sails and spare
spars of the squadron, within the limits of a redoubt mounted
with a few nine-pounders, and surrounded with a fosse. Every
other day, these troops were marched out in martial array, to a
level piece of ground in the vicinity, and there for hours went
through all sorts of military evolutions, surrounded by flocks of
the natives, who looked on with savage admiration at the show,
and as savage a hatred of the actors. A regiment of the Old
Guard, reviewed on a summer's day in the Champs Elysees, could
not have made a more critically correct appearance. The
officers' regimentals, resplendent with gold lace and embroidery
as if purposely calculated to dazzle the islanders, looked as if
just unpacked from their Parisian cases.

The sensation produced by the presence of the strangers had not
in the least subsided at the period of our arrival at the
islands. The natives still flocked in numbers about the
encampment, and watched with the liveliest curiosity everything
that was going forward. A blacksmith's forge, which had been set