Chapter Twenty-seven - Page 2

highly
polished, belongs to Wormoonoo: it is far handsomer than the one
which old Marheyo so greatly prizes; it is the most valuable
article belonging to its owner. And yet I have seen it leaning
against a cocoanut tree in the grove, and there it was found when
sought for. Here is a sperm-whale tooth, graven all over with
cunning devices: it is the property of Karluna; it is the most
precious of the damsel's ornaments. In her estimation its price
is far above rubies--and yet there hangs the dental jewel by its
cord of braided bark, in the girl's house, which is far back in
the valley; the door is left open, and all the inmates have gone
off to bathe in the stream.*

*The strict honesty which the inhabitants of nearly all the
Polynesian Islands manifest toward each other, is in striking
contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in
their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that,
according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a
hatchet or a wrought nail from a European, is looked upon as a
praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing
in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical
visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair
object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to
reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the
islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it
which the reader of South Sea voyages is too apt to form.

So much for the respect in which 'personal property' is held in
Typee; how secure an investment of 'real property' may be, I
cannot take upon me to say. Whether the land of the valley was
the joint property of its inhabitants, or whether it was
parcelled out among a certain number of landed proprietors who
allowed everybody to 'squat' and 'poach' as much as he or she
pleased, I never could ascertain. At any rate, musty parchments
and title-deeds there were none on the island; and I am half
inclined to believe that its inhabitants hold their broad valleys
in fee simple from Nature herself; to have and to hold, so long
as grass grows and water runs; or until their French visitors, by
a summary mode of conveyancing, shall appropriate them to their
own benefit and behoof.

Yesterday I saw Kory-Kory hie him away armed with a long pole,
with which, standing on the ground, he knocked down the fruit
from the topmost boughs of the trees, and brought them home in
his basket of cocoanut leaves. Today I see an islander, whom I
know to reside in a distant part of the valley, doing the
self-same thing. On the sloping bank of the stream are a number
of banana-trees I have often seen a score or two of young people
making a merry