I have mentioned presents,a vexed question in the South Seas;and one which well illustrates the common,ignorant habit of regarding races in a lump.In many quarters the Polynesian gives only to receive.I have visited islands where the population mobbed me for all the world like dogs after the waggon of cat's-meat;and where the frequent proposition,'You my pleni (friend),'or (with more of pathos)'You all 'e same my father,'must be received with hearty laughter and a shout.And perhaps everywhere,among the greedy and rapacious,a gift is regarded as a sprat to catch a whale.It is the habit to give gifts and to receive returns,and such characters,complying with the custom,will look to it nearly that they do not lose.But for persons of a different stamp the statement must be reversed.The shabby Polynesian is anxious till he has received the return gift;the generous is uneasy until he has made it.The first is disappointed if you have not given more than he;the second is miserable if he thinks he has given less than you.This is my experience;if it clash with that of others,I pity their fortune,and praise mine:the circumstances cannot change what I have seen,nor lessen what I have received.And indeed I find that those who oppose me often argue from a ground of singular presumptions;comparing Polynesians with an ideal person,compact of generosity and gratitude,whom I never had the pleasure of encountering;and forgetting that what is almost poverty to us is wealth almost unthinkable to them.I will give one instance:Ichanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of Stanislao's with a certain clever man,a great hater and contemner of Kanakas.
'Well!what were they?'he cried.'A pack of old men's beards.
Trash!'And the same gentleman,some half an hour later,being upon a different train of thought,dwelt at length on the esteem in which the Marquesans held that sort of property,how they preferred it to all others except land,and what fancy prices it would fetch.
Using his own figures,I computed that,in this commodity alone,the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao represented between two and three hundred dollars;and the queen's official salary is of two hundred and forty in the year.
But generosity on the one hand,and conspicuous meanness on the other,are in the South Seas,as at home,the exception.It is neither with any hope of gain,nor with any lively wish to please,that the ordinary Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts.Aplain social duty lies before him,which he performs correctly,but without the least enthusiasm.And we shall best understand his attitude of mind,if we examine our own to the cognate absurdity of marriage presents.There we give without any special thought of a return;yet if the circumstance arise,and the return be withheld,we shall judge ourselves insulted.We give them usually without affection,and almost never with a genuine desire to please;and our gift is rather a mark of our own status than a measure of our love to the recipients.So in a great measure and with the common run of the Polynesians;their gifts are formal;they imply no more than social recognition;and they are made and reciprocated,as we pay and return our morning visits.And the practice of marking and measuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in the island world.A gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal;and has entered profoundly into the mind of islanders.Peace and war,marriage,adoption and naturalisation,are celebrated or declared by the acceptance or the refusal of gifts;and it is as natural for the islander to bring a gift as for us to carry a card-case.