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[126] chapter 15 Authentic Eden in a Pagan Sea The Marquesas! What strange visions of outlandish things does the very name spirit up! Naked houris—cannibal banquets—groves of cocoa-nut— coral reefs—tatooed chiefs—and bamboo temples; sunny valleys planted with bread-fruit trees—carved canoes dancing on the flashing blue waters—savage woodlands guarded by horrible idols—heathenish rites and human sacrifices. —Typee, Chapter 1 The view of the entrance of the bay is beautiful, far surpassing anything I have noticed in these seas; and although rugged, isolated masses of rock here and there start up, to add their sombre effect to the otherwise brilliant tints of the landscape, still the luxuriance of the slopes and valleys . . . produces a sensation which cannot be justly entrusted to pen or pencil. If one did not associate gentle slopes and levels with our ideas of paradise, I should say this is it. —Sir Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World . . . 1836–1842 (1843), vol. 1, 353 Soon after his ship entered Taiohae Bay, Melville tells us in Typee, a South Sea island vagabond—an Englishman jovially and almost helplessly inebriated —came alongside in a whaleboat and insisted on piloting the craft to her anchorage.1 He got aboard only after receiving considerable assistance at the gangway, and once on deck he had much difficulty in standing. Despite the refusal of Melville’s captain to accept his services, he floundered into the weather quarter boat, steadied himself by grasping a shroud, and began glibly issuing nautical directions. And so, hearing at once the commands of their determined skipper and those of this voluble, wildly gesturing newcomer, Melville and his shipmates worked the whaler into port. This strange visitor to the Acushnet may well have been one of two English pilots, Charles Lovell or Lawrence Hutchinson, both of whom had figured notoriously in island affairs during recent years.But for the intervention of an American naval officer in righting the troubles caused by these men in 1841, Captain Pease might not have brought the Acushnet and Herman Melville to Nukahiva during the following year. Authentic Eden in a Pagan Sea   [127] Under orders from Commodore Alexander Claxton to “ascertain the sentiment of the Natives towards our whale fishery-men,who are reported to have suffered outrage if not captivity when resorting there for refreshment,”2 Commodore French Forrest of the sloop-of-war St. Louis visited Nukahiva in February 1841.He discovered that Taiohae Bay,once a popular place of call for whale ships,had recently been nearly abandoned by them as a consequence of open warfare between the two harbor pilots, Lovell and Hutchinson. Placing themselves at the head of different parties of foreigners and natives,these two Englishmen fought violently for the exclusive right of directing the traffic of the port. Visiting whalemen had been prevented from obtaining supplies and had been menaced whenever they went ashore. Commander Forrest arrested the two pilots as well as nine seamen who were among the troublemakers . He kept the seamen prisoners aboard the St. Louis but set the pilots free after they signed a formal agreement to be friendly towards each other and the natives and to perform their duties alternately.Tranquillity restored, Commander Forrest sailed on February 17,1841.Thereafter American whalers once more frequented the harbor. Charles Lovell could not keep out of trouble. On March 11, 1841, he “accidentally shot dead”Samuel Waggoner,one of the mates of the New Bedford ship George.3 No mention,dramatic or otherwise,has been found of him after the date of this incident. Lawrence Hutchinson, who was still leading craft into Taiohae Bay in 1843,4 may therefore have been the pilot who boarded Melville’s ship. The Typee account describes a flotilla of noisy savages following the drunken Englishman out to the ship in outrigger canoes and several swimming natives who propelled floating bunches of coconuts towards the whaler.5 Not knowing that women were forbidden from using canoes, Melville was struck by their absence in the group of islanders who scrambled up the side of his ship. But as he looked towards the land, he saw about a mile and a half away a commotion in the water and learned from one of the natives that it was made by a shoal of young Nukahivan girls who were coming off to welcome the mariners. As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld...

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