XIV
SOME NIGGERS
"Look at those niggers! Whose are they?" (An American Suffragist lady on board s.s. 'Ventura,' entering Pago-Pago Harbour, Samoa, October 1913. Apropos of the Samoans.)
I suppose that if news came that the National Gallery was burnt down, one might feel, while hearing of the general damage, the rooms gutted or untouched, the Rembrandts and Titians saved, harmed, or lost, a sudden disproportionately keen little stab of wonder: "The Pisanello St George," or "The Patinir Flight into Egypt"—"What's happened to that?" So now there must be a handful of wanderers here and there who, among all the major conflagration and disasters of nations and continents, have felt the tug of the question, "What of Samoa?"
The South Sea Islands have an invincible glamour. Any bar in 'Frisco or Sydney will give you tales of seamen who slipped ashore in Samoa or Tahiti or the Marquesas for a month's holiday, five, ten, or twenty years ago.
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