Emerging for the first time from an air conditioned Air Tahiti jetliner into the fiery tropical air of Bora Bora, I felt vaguely as if I were stepping onto the surface of a distant planet. In actuality, I was stepping not onto Bora Bora proper, but onto an outlying motu--a coral islet on the fringing reef of the island proper--where, during World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps carved out a landing strip.
     The diminutive airport was a mosaic of color. The rising sun cast a red-orange hue over the sky, which descended into a purple sliver over a shimmering turquoise sea. Along the periphery of the runway, reminiscent of some forlorn country road, red hibiscus blossoms adorned the profuse green shrubbery. Multicolored fabrics with intricate flower patterns masqueraded as bystanders shading their eyes with cupped hands outside the thatched-roof terminal.
     I had made the laughable error of wearing a full suit, albeit a light- colored summer suit, and was totally unprepared for the fierce, cloying heat that lay like a fever over the Tropic of Capricorn. I had also not anticipated the other-worldliness--the ragged volcanic protrusions spiring above the sparkling lagoon and the unearthly stillness that enveloped the South Pacific.
     Temporarily paralyzed atop the airplane stairs, I loosened my collar with tremendous exaggeration and gasped obtusely, "H-h-hot!"
     "Isn't it something?" a woman, obviously more seasoned at Bora Bora landings, said behind me. I descended stiffly to the runway, endeavoring to move as few body parts as possible. I was reminded of scratched eight-millimeter home movies of infants staggering on newly discovered legs. On the freshly asphalted landing strip, sporadic pools told of a recent rain. As a human stream, the passengers surged across the runway to the quaint Polynesian-design terminal building, with the humidity hugging our bodies beneath our clothes.
     Few sights are as breathtaking as approaching Bora Bora from the air. The island is surrounded by a barrier reef, which forms a white ring at the edges of the lagoon where the sea breaks over the coral. Inside the lagoon, the water is a shimmering turquoise color, and outside, a rich, cobalt blue. The island itself rises up from the vast Pacific in craggy spires. The slopes blanketed with purple rainforests descend to a flat perimeter populated by groves of coconut palms. Patches of white beach fringe the island, where the still waters of the lagoon lap gently at the sand.
     There is nowhere to land on the island itself, and consequently, airplanes land on the outlying motu, using the former Marine landing strip. From the motu, a ferry boat transports airline passengers across the lagoon to the main island, making a leisurely journey across the azure water, exposing various awesome views of the pearl of all islands.
     Guidebooks call Bora Bora a favorite haunt of movie stars, entertainers, writers, and artists. Tourism brochures call it a refuge from the bustle of industrialized civilization. Nightlifers thirsting for casinos, shops, and discoteques call it "Boring Boring." The best I was able to improvise was a feebly croaked "H-h-hot!"

* * *

In Tahitian mythology, Taaroa was the beginning. He had no mother or father and, based on deduction, was apparently his own parent. Eventually growing bored of floating around in a vacuum, he created the islands of and around Tahiti, starting with Raiatea, which is also known as Hava'iti, for which Hawaii was named by wayfaring Tahitians. After making the islands, Taaroa filled the land with plants and animals and the ocean, with fish. Then he created the first man, Ti'i (in Hawaiian, Tiki), who took as his wife the goddess Hina. Still, after all this creativity, there remained a significant obstacle: It seems that the carcass of a giant octopus was holding down the sky, resulting in a permanent state of nighttime.
     The demi-gods Maui and his brother Ru undertook to liberate the world from darkness. When Ru attempted to snatch-and-jerk the dead octopus, he was rewarded for his efforts with a giant-size hernia. His intestines popped out of his abdomen and floated over to Bora Bora, where they can be seen today in the form of clouds hugging the peak of the silent volcano, Mount Otemanu.
     Next, Maui came to bat and took a different tack. Using a sharp-edged seashell, he cut away the octopus' tentacles. As the detached tentacles fell away, the sky rose up, and voila!-- good day, sunshine. At the time, Bora Bora was inhabited by a fire goddess, Pere, who later packed her bags and moved to Hawaii, where she changed her name to Pele. Just like a Southside woman--always hanging out on the Northside, where she doesn't even use her real name.
     Anthrologists speculate that, somewhere around 2000 B.C., Polynesians from Malaysia, or possibly from South America, sailed in outrigger canoes to the Marquesas Islands, using the currents, stars, and flight patterns of birds to navigate the Pacific. The wandering tribe eventually settled in and around Tahiti, but incessant warring drove the people out to sea again. Heading due north, their descendants made an incredible two-thousand-mile journey by canoe to the Hawaiian Islands. Judging from carbon-dated artifacts, Tahiti was first settled around 850 AD.
     In August, 1766, the British frigate HMS Dolphin, under the command of Captain Sammuel Wallis and the HMS Swallow, commanded by Captain Philip Carteret, left England in search of the Terres Australes, a legendary continent rumored to lie in the Pacific ocean south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Careret had sailed on a previous expedition commanded by Commodore John Byron, the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron. Attempting to cross the Straits of Magellan, the two ships became separated in a storm. The Dolphin sailed northwest, then west along latitude 20 degrees south, passing through the Tuamotu archipelago.
     An account of the voyage was kept by the ship's master, George Robertson. In his journal, Robertson, wrote:

...our Captain and first lieutenant we had in a very bad way, and a great many of our men extremely bad in the scurvy and other complaints, and those who did duty was all very weakly.

Roughly translated, the expedition was up the lagoon without a palm frond. On June 18, 1767, a high land mass was sighted, and the Dolphin steered west to investigate. As they approached the island, a thick fog descended, and the ship dropped anchor to avoid washing up on the reefs.
     The next morning, as the sun rose and the mist lifted, the sailors beheld an incredible spectacle. The outline of ragged forest-lined mountains towered over the gentle Pacific. Hundreds of outrigger canoes bearing tall, brown Polynesian men wearing leafy green crowns surrounded the ship.
     An even more astonishing sight awaited the sailors from the distant shore. Standing in a line along the distant black sand beach was a bevy of naked women, at least a hundred strong, all jumping up and down and waving in the direction of the ship. The English sailors, who had not seen a female of any species, except perhaps for a dolphin or two, in nearly a year--much less, a mob of stark naked Tahitian beauties--made all the friendly gestures they could think of to entice the islanders aboard. But their scurvied stomachs growled even louder than their deprived groins. They offered the natives cloth, knives, and other trinkets and, to communicate their own wants, made noises like pigs and roosters.
     Try to imagine this scene: a shipload of walking corpses dressed in tattered laced uniforms hopping around on the deck squealing like barnyard animals and holding up bolts of linen and strings of beads like carnival hawkers. Now consider that this was the Tahitians' first glimpse of "civilization." The natives must have regarded this spectacle in the same manner that modern New Yorkers would regard a race of bulimic Cable Shopping Network announcers standing on a flying saucer descending on Central Park without clearance from LaGuardia air traffic control.
     The English sailors did finally succeed in communicating their desires, and on June 19, an entourage of Polynesians boarded the Dolphin laden with chickens, coconuts, fruit, and hogs. The Tahitians demonstrated mild interest in the trinkets and beads that the British proffered, but what seemed to interest them the most were nails. The islanders' most important commerce was fishing, and it did not take a French nuclear physicist to deduce that a nail could be bent into an effective fishhook. In eighteenth-century England, nails were sold by the hundred. Nails that cost ten pence per hundred were called ten-penny nails, and so forth. According to Robertson's journal, on June 22, the market price for a twenty- pound hog was a twenty-penny nail. A smaller ham went for a ten-penny nail, and a piece of fruit for a string of beads. The Tahitians, enamored with encroaching civilization, were beside themselves.
     The next morning, the Dolphin was greeted by a fleet of three hundred canoes bearing four thousand erstwhile traders. What ensued that day resembled the Commodities Exchange at high noon, with islanders waving chickens and coconuts over their heads and the half-starved sailors responding with plumed hats, ruffled shirts, and handfuls of nails, amid a cacaphony of shouts in English, Irish, Scottish, Swedish, and Tahitian. To establish a favorable market position, the sailors reverted to a time- honored British tradition--aiming their muskets randomly at point-blank range and blowing the heads off of a couple of Tahitians. This gesture assured His Majesty's representatives of a favorable rate of exchange for some time.
     Two weeks had passed since the ship dropped anchor, when Robertson remarked in his journal:

...a new sort of trade took most of [the men's] attention, though it might properly be called the 'old trade.'

On July 9, Robertson dutifully reported, the price of a tumble in the bushes with a wanton olive-skinned beauty was a thirty-penny nail--representing a 50- percent increase over the cost of a twenty-pound ham. No sooner had the new economy been invented than rampant inflation had set in. The Tahitian males encouraged their female counterparts to seduce as many English sailors as possible--as often as possible. No record exists of Tahitian females organizing any protests.
     The bartering continued in earnest for the next ten days. Finally, Captain Wallis, who had been confined to his cabin with scurvy from the time the island was first sighted, felt fit enough to venture up on deck. As he struggled up the ladder, the rungs collapsed beneath his weight, as frail as it was, and Wallis tumbled down on his vulnerable derriere. The captain let out a roar, which, owing to his condition, subsequently erupted into a violent coughing fit. By this time, there was no one left onboard but Roberston and the ship's carpenter to hear his vehement outpour.
     "I want this rotten staircase fixed at once!" Wallis wheezed--or something to that effect.
     The carpenter appeared in the aperture at the top of the collapsed ladder and, surveying his captain's misfortune, shook his head sorrowfully. "Sorry, sir," he replied, "but I cannot."
     "Insolence!" Wallis cried, between coughs. "I shall have you in irons!"
     "If you like, sir. But the staircase will remain as it is," the carpenter replied, calmly. "Y'see, all the nails is carried off."
     "What!" The captain gasped, unable to believe his ears.
     Robertson appeared in the aperture. "Every nail that can be pried loose has been removed and carried off by the men," he explained fretfully. "Sir, we're blessed the hull is still intact."
     Before male readers begin packing foot lockers with roofing nails, they should know that the French Polynesian government now restricts the import of foreign-made construction materials. Morevoer, the rate of exchange has reportedly accelerated from a thirty-penny nail to a twelve-hundred-dollar Christian Dior evening gown. Maidens no longer greet strangers by jumping up and down on the beach in the buff, and their watchful mothers, no longer comely maidens, are rumored to pack a wallop.

Copyright (c) 2004, Dennis L. Foster All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, or stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of Dennis L. Foster.