These literary images were used as illustrations of the happiness of man living in, what people still persist in calling, the state of nature. There is no doubt, of course, that at the moment of the discovery our islanders had reached a full extreme of their civilization; that numerous, splendid, and untainted in their physical development, they seemed to live in a facility of existence, in an absence of anxiety emphasized by their love of pleasure and fondness for society—by a simplicity of conscience which found little fault in what we reprobate—in a happiness which is not and could not be our own. The “pursuit of happiness” in which these islanders were engaged, and in which they seemed successful, is the catchword of the eighteenth century.

People were far then from the cruel ideas of Hobbes; and the more amiable views of the nature of man and of his rights echo in the sentimentality of the last century, like the sound of the island surf about Tahiti.

Nor am I allowed to forget the assertion of those “self-evident truths” in which the ancestor of my companion, Atamo, most certainly had a hand. So that the islands to which we are hastening with each beat of the engine, are emblems of our own past in thought, as they have played a part also in the history of which we see the development to-day, the end of the old society, the beginning of the new, the revolutions of Europe and of America, all which lies in my mind obscurely as I recall, every few moments, my vague emotions at the name of Otaheite.

I believe too that our feelings are intensified because they are directed toward a far-off island; a word, a thing of all time marked by man as something wherein to place the ideal, the supernatural; the home of the blest, the abode of the dead, the fountain of eternal youth, Circe and Calypso, the haven of man tired of weary sea, the calm smile of the ocean when the winds have ceased. The word sings itself within my mind, and the dreams I have been recalling give me interior light during these gray days of adverse wind, as in Heine’s song of the “Land of Perpetual Youth”:

February 12th.

Six days of grey weather and dark nights, and in the last evening, quite late, the sun setting, lit up for a moment an island, Moorea, which is distant from Tahiti only some dozen miles. It made an enchanted vision of peaks and high mountains, as strange as any which you may have seen in the backgrounds of old Italian paintings, far enough to be vague in the twilight haze and yet distinct in places high up, where the singular shapes were modelled in pink and yellow-green. The level rays of the sun pierced through the forest coverings, and came back to my sight, focused from underlying rocks, in a glistening network of rainbow colours. Then all faded in a cloudy twilight, half lit by the struggling moon, and we saw a vague space of island, like a dream, edged by a white line of reef; this was Tahiti. All night we ran east and west, waiting for the day, which would allow us to pass through the reef that lies in front of the so-called City of Papeete, which is a large village, the “capital” of the island, and the centre of the French possessions in Oceanica.

TAHITI

Near the quay neatly edged with stone steps, ships lay only a few rods off in the deep water, so that their yards ran into the boughs of the great trees. Further out, on a French man-of-war, the bugle marked the passing duty of the hour. Everything else was lazy, except the little horses driven by the kanakas. Natives moved easily about, no longer with the stride of the Samoans, which throws out the knees and feet, as if it were for the stage. People were lighter built, more efface; but there were pretty faces, many evidently those of half-breeds.

White men were there with the same contrasting look of fierceness and inquisitiveness marked in their faces; these now that we see less of them, look beaky and eager in contrast with the brown types that fill the larger part of our sight and acquaintance.

We were kindly received by the persons for whom we had introductions; and set about through various more or less shady streets marked French-wise on the corners: Rue des Beaux-Arts, Rue de la Cathédrale, etc.; first to a little restaurant, where I heard in an adjacent room, “Buvons, amis, buvons,” and the noise of fencing; then to hire furniture and buy household needs for the housekeeping we proposed to set up that very day, for there are no hotels. The evening was ended at the “Cercle,” where we played dominoes, to remind ourselves that we were in some outlying attachment of provincial France. By the next morning we were settled in a little cottage on the wonderful beach, that is shaded all along by worthy trees; we had engaged a cook, and Awoki was putting all to rights. As we walk back into the town there are French walls and yellow stuccoed houses for government purposes. A few officers in white and soldiers pass along.

A few scattered French ladies pass under the trees; so far as

we can tell (because we have been long away) dressed in some correct French fashion; looking not at all incongruous, because already we feel that this is dreamland—that anybody in any guise is natural here, except a few Europeans, who meet the place halfway, and belong neither to where they came from, nor to the unreality of the place they are in. There is no noise, the street is the beach; the trappings of the artillery horses, and the scabbards of the sabres rattle in a profound silence, so great that I can distinctly count the pulsations of the water running from the fountain near us into the sea. The shapes and finish of the government buildings, their long spaces of enclosure, the moss upon them, remind us of the sleepiest towns of out-of-the-way bits of France.

The natives slip over the dust in bare feet, the waving draperies of the long gowns of the women seeming to add to the stealthy or undulating movement which carries them along. Many draw up under the arm some corner of this long, nightgowny dress that it may not trail, or let their arms swing loosely to the rhythm of their passing by.

Most of the native men wear loose jackets, sometimes shirts above the great loin-cloth which hangs down from the waist, and which is the same as the lava-lava of the Samoans, the sulu of the Fijians, and is here called the pareu.

Many of the women have garlands round their necks and

flowers behind their ears. Occasionally we hear sounds of singing that come back to us from some cross-street; and as I have ventured to look, I see in a little enclosure some women seated, and one standing before them, making some gestures, perhaps of a dance; and I grieve to say, looking as if they had begun their latest evening very early in the day. But this I have noticed from sheer inquisitiveness. I feel that in another hour or so I shall not care to look for anything, but shall sit quietly and let everything pass like the turn of a revolving panorama. In this state of mind, which represents the idleness of arrival, we meet at our Consul’s an agreeable young gentleman belonging to a family well known to us by name—the Branders; a family that represents—though mixed with European—the best blood of the islanders. They speak French and English with the various accents and manners that belong to those divisions of European society; they are well-connected over in Scotland. Do you remember the Branders of “Lorna Doone”? At home their ancestry goes back full forty generations. They are young and pleasant, and we forget how old we are in comparison. We call on their mother later, a charming woman, and on an aunt, Mrs. Atwater, who has a similar charm of manner, accent and expression; and on another aunt, the ex-Queen Marau; but she is away with her younger sister Manihinihi.

In the evening, with some remnant of energy, we walk still further than our house upon the beach, passing over the same roads that Stoddard wearily trod in his “South Sea Idyls.” We try to find, by the little river that ends our walk, on this side of the old French fort, the calaboose where Melville was shut up. There is no one to help us in our search; no one remembers anything. Buildings occupy the spaces of woodland that Melville saw about him. Nothing remains but the same charm of light and air which he, like all others, has tried to describe and to bring back home in words. But the beach is still as beautiful as if composed for Claude Lorraine. Great trees stand up within a few feet of the tideless sea. Where the shadows run in at times, canoes with outriggers are pulled up. People sit near the water’s edge, on the grass. Outside of all this shade, we see the island of Moorea further out than the far line of the reef, no longer blue, but glowing like a rose in the beginning of the twilight.

At night we hear girls passing before our little garden; we see them swinging together, with arms about the flowers of their necks. They sing—alas! not always soberly, and the wind brings the odour of the gardenias that cover their necks and heads.

In the night the silence becomes still greater around us, though we can hear at a distance the music of the band that plays in the square, which is the last amusement left to this dreary deserted village called a town. In the square, which is surrounded by many trees, through which one passes to hidden official buildings, native musicians play European music, apparently accommodated to their own ideas, but all in excellent time, so that one just realizes that somehow or other these airs must have been certain well-known ones. But nothing matters very much.

A few visitors walk about; native women sit in rows on the ground, apparently to sell flowers, which they have before them. People of distinction make visits to a few carriages drawn up under the trees. Occasionally, in the shadows or before the lights, in an uncertain manner, natives begin to dance to the accompaniment of the band. But it is all listless, apparently, at least to the sight, and just as drowsy as the day.

In the very early morning we drive to the end of the bay at Point Venus, to see the stones placed by Wilkes and subsequent French navigators, in order to test the growth of the coral outside. And we make a call on a retired French naval officer, who has been about here more or less since 1843, the time of Melville. We drive at first through back roads of no special character. We pass through a great avenue of trees over-arching, the pride of the town; we cross a river torrent, and the end of our road brings us along the sea, but far up, so that we look down over spaces of palm and indentations of small bays fringed with foam, all in the shade below us. On the sea outline, always the island of Moorea, and back on Tahiti, the great mountain, the Aorai, the edge apparently of a great central crater; a fantastic serrated peak called the “Diadem,” also an edge of the great chasm; and on either side along slopes that run to the sea, from the central heights, and recall the slopes of Hawaii. But all is green; even the eight thousand feet of the Aorai, which look blue and violet, melt into the green around us, so as to show that the same verdure passes unbroken, wherever there is a foothold, from the sea to the highest tops. This haze of green, so delicate as to be namable only by other colours, gives a look of sweetness to these high spaces, and makes them repeat, in tones of light, against the blue of the sky, chords of colour similar to those of the trees and the grass against the blue and the violet of the sea.

Nearer us the slopes are all broken up into knife edges of green velvet streaked right near us by clay, which in contrast seems almost like vermilion. So far the roads were good, though the slippery clay might be very different when the great rains came down; and as our driver forced his horses at a gallop near the edges of the cliffs hanging over the lovely pictures of the secluded trees and water, we felt that a more sandy, more prosaic road would better suit the South Sea habits of carriage travel.

All the trees were about us that we knew in Samoa; and many more rounded mango trees, with red fruit hanging on long stems, or lying green by the road. All this was to be seen with cool air full of life, and under a sky more like ours than the Samoan, but exquisitely blue and gay.

Little has been done by us, even of going about; Atamo has written many letters; I have tried to sketch a little from our verandah, in front of which, on the shore, grows a twisted purau, called fau in Samoa. Through its branches I see the sea and the reef, and the island of Moorea, in every tint of blue that keeps the light, even in the evening or in the afterglow, when the sunset lights up in yellow and purple the sky behind it. And yet there is a reminiscence in my mind of something not foreign to us, even at this moment, when the haze of light seems new, and the pale blue sea is spangled with little silver stars, as far as I can see distinctly.

We have called on the ex-King; and in the evening, at the club, I have seen him—a handsome, elderly man, somewhat broken and far from sober. He was playing with a certain

Keke, a black Senegambian in the French service, a prince of his own negro land, who speaks excellent French, and whom I surprised sitting on the sill of his house one evening (while we were taking a rainy walk). Keke wore in this retirement a pair of marvellous trousers, of a brilliant yellow, with red flamboyant pattern—something too fine for the ordinary out-of-door world. Many of the officials are coloured men from the French colonies, and so is the governor more or less. Of course the idea is infinitely respectable and humanitarian, as so many French things are, but I fear that the Republic is unwise in sending people whom the native here cannot look up to as he does to a white man.

Of course they are all French and have votes, as the natives here can have also; but whether it is for the real good of a population accustomed to dependence I am not so sure. There are many curious anomalies: our American friends of Samoa speak, with our natural way of looking at things correctly, of the preposterous way the French have of backing the Catholic missions and protecting their missionaries, even as we would. But here I find the Catholic mission dependent upon the gifts of the faithful, while the Protestant missions are supported by the French government, as the Protestant clergy would be in France.

The King, upon whom we called and whom we met at the club in affable mood, surrendered his rights to the French, a few years ago, under long pressure and with some advice from the missionaries. In exchange he received an annual income, and retained his honours and certain privileges. This end I suppose to have been inevitable. His mother, the famous Queen whose name was known to all sea-going people in that half of the globe, whose resistance to French pretensions had come, apparently, for a moment, near bringing France and England into a quarrel, had lived for many years under French authority, a government under the name of protectorate. Such, I suppose, must always be the end, as it has been everywhere that the English have been; as it has been in Fiji; as it will be to-morrow, probably, when King George of Tonga dies; as it will be in Hawaii, whenever the whites there determine to use their power. Nor is the line of the Pomaré, any more than that of the Hawaiian rulers, so connected with all antiquity as to be typical of what a Polynesian great chief might be to the people whom he rules. The Pomarés date only from the time of Cook. They were slowly wresting the power from the great family of the Tevas, by war and by that still more powerful means—marriage, which in the South Seas is the only full and legitimate source of authority.

You know from all that I have told you of Samoa that in Polynesia descent is the only real absolute aristocracy; there is no ruling except through blood. Hence the absurdity of the kingships that we have fostered or established, which in our own minds seemed quite legitimate, because they embodied the European ideas which belong to our ancestry. Hence the general discomfort and trouble that we have helped to foster. Hence also—and far worse—the breaking down, in reality, of all the bases upon which these old societies rested, the saving of which in part was the only hope remaining for the gradual education of the brown man for his keeping to ideas of order different from our own, it is true, but still involving the same original foundations. Hence the demoralization, the arbitrary “white laws,” always misunderstood, always bringing on the vices which they were meant to control; hence the end of the “brown” man by himself.

The missionaries’ good-will has never gone so far as to try to understand him as a being with the same rights to methods of thinking as we claim for ourselves. Part of this sad trouble is of course owing to the unfortunate moment which gave birth both to greater missionary enterprise, to a first acquaintance with these races, and to the disruption of authority in the West. Perhaps, indeed, it might then have required more comprehension than could be asked of any but the most exceptional mind to realize that what we call savagery was a mode of civilization. So must have been the European world when the civilization of antiquity broke down, and things of price went into the night of forgetfulness, along with the mistaken beliefs and superstitions that were joined to them. So here, where, as in all civilizations, religious views, manners, customs, superstitions were woven about every bit of life, the exterminating of anything that might seem pagan involved many habits, and some good ones, which necessarily, from their fundamental antiquity, had been protected by religious rites. Hence we brought on idleness and consequent vice; for idleness is as bad for the savage, whom we innocently suppose to be idle, because we do not understand how he busies himself, as it is for the worker in modern civilization. It is not the actual doing that is important, but such occupation as may determine a habit of useful or harmless attention, which prevents the suggestion of untried moral experiments.

Even tattooing was a matter which like any society duty involved attention, considerable self-abnegation and suffering, so as to suit the supposed requirement of civilization, and a recognition of some manly standard, however childish it might seem to us, even if it seems as absurd as some of our society standards might seem to the so-called savage.

These reflections came from reading a law of missionary civilization which I find in the records of the year 1822, in the neighbouring island of Huahine; in which a man or woman who shall mark with tattoo, if not clearly proved, shall be tried and punished, and made, for the man, to work on the road, for the woman, to make mats; in a proportion of which the only exact measure that I find is that for the man it is about the same as that for bigamy; for the woman just the same as adultery.

With the coming of the missionaries, with the coming of the white men traders, coincided the first attempts of the ambition of these Pomaré chieftains. They had already done a good deal for themselves before Cook left for the last time. He had seen Oberea, of whom I first spoke, a great person. When he left, her line of family was already on the decline; war and massacre had weakened it. Pomaré—the Pomaré of that day—with the support of the guns of the white men, established his final superiority, and becoming the great chief was solemnly crowned and oiled by the missionaries, like a new king of Scripture. And this man is the last of the line. His first great ancestor, Otu, just appears with the first discoverers’ records of the details of the ceremonials and etiquette belonging to high chieftainship, which are recorded in the first missionary accounts.

You may remember the picture painted by Robert Smirke, Royal Academician, where the high-priest of Tahiti cedes the district in which we now are to Captain Wilson of the missionary ship the Duff, for the missionaries. In the centre, with a background of palms and peaks, two young people—Pomaré, the son of Otu, and his queen—are represented on men’s shoulders. That was the old fashion of Tahiti, the great chief not being allowed to touch the land with his feet, lest it become his by touch.

And therein also is shown the peculiar political arrangement by which the young chief took his father’s place when a child, and ruled, in appearance at least; for there in the picture alongside of the two young sovereigns, called kings by us, stand father and mother uncovered to the waist, out of respect to their child’s higher position. Otu and Iddeah, the dear lady whose notions about infanticide troubled the good missionaries to such an extent, but whose courtesy was willing to go so far as to promise that she “never would do it again,” when once she had done as she pleased. As I understand it, the Pomarés, then, pass away with the present King, but the great line whose place they took—the Tevas or their representatives—remain. In that line continues a descent from that Queen Oberea, whose figure, in another picture that I have referred to and which I beg you will look up in the volume containing Wallis’s discovery, is so charmingly made a type for an imaginary kingdom, like those of the operas and the tapestries of the eighteenth century, in which nothing is untouched by fancy but the muskets and grenadier caps and uniforms of Wallis and his men.

I have almost been tempted, as you see, to begin a sort of explanation of the history of the island; but I think that I can manage later to give you certain stories which will have the advantage of a more personal knowledge of acquaintance with what might be called the text, than these vague reminiscences of the books that I have read and which are nearer to you than they are to me. Meanwhile, let me tell you that last evening, at the club, His Majesty, who was in extreme good humour, singled us out, told us how he liked us, that he liked Americans, who themselves liked Tahitians, and that the French, who stood all about him, were all d—d—d——

This he said in English, in a proper reminiscence of nautical terms of reproach, and added blandly, “But I don’t understand English.”

He has a fine, aristocratic head, and must have been a very handsome man. He has for an adopted son one of the young gentlemen of the Branders, who will succeed to an empty honour; though there might perhaps yet be a part to fill, for the family that represents all that there has been far back and recently.

Next week we shall go into the country, further along the coast, and make a visit to the old lady who is the head of the house, grandmother of these young men, and who is the chiefess representing that great line of the Teva, alongside of which the Pomaré—the kings through the foreigner—are new people. Then I may write lengthily, or at least with some detail, about matters that I only see confusedly, but which must be curiously full of ancient, archaic history, however lost or eclipsed to-day.

I notice in my habits, now forming, as I write out my journal for you, a tendency to dream away into a manner of philosophizing which evidently has for its first beginning the appreciation of the remote forms of these savage civilizations; so that as I grow to understand them better, it is necessary for my individual happiness of thought to be able to consider the earlier ways of man as not unconnected with the present, and even to be willing to consider all foundations of society as passing methods suitable to the moment, and perhaps in the great future to vary as much from the present as the past is strangely different. The good missionary, who simply looked upon a good deal of this past as strangely resembling the antiquities of the Bible, consoled himself, and persuaded many of his brown brethren in the belief that they, at last, were the famous lost tribes, who still kept, in many ways and details, that very peculiar manner of life which the Bible sets out in many details.

One evening in Samoa, the great Baker, the former missionary and ruler of Tonga, finding me interested and credulous in regard to many superstitions which he described, and many facts quite as extraordinary that he vouched for, unfolded to me, as a regard of confidence, his firm belief that in these islands of the Pacific, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin had found a home. And if a man so worldly wise, such a producer of money, such a controller of weaker minds, dwelt in this view with satisfaction, as a relief from the sordid necessities of power, I think that a mere dreamer like myself can be excused for turning to more scientific and accurate arrangements of men’s history.

These words come to me more distinctly suggested by the place in which I am, not because I am thinking of the ancient ways that I touch, but because I remember how Melville passed from those records of exterior life and scenery to a dwelling within his mind—a following out of metaphysical ideas, and a scheming of possible evolution in the future of man.

Papara, April 7th.

This is a land where to live would have made you happy. Outdoors and in the water, and in no compulsory dress, would have been your usual way of passing a great part of the time. I thought of you while I looked this morning at the children playing in the water of the little river, or in the surf that rolls into it or along the shore. The girls, little wee things, swam in the stream near its mouth, where it is safe, and plunged in and out, and swam under water, their feet and backs showing within the light and dark of the currents; for the river has been very full, and the surf and tide have been heavy, so that the children take their turn with the current. The boys were out in the surf, on the border of which occasionally the girls played, edging sideways to it, and running back with swinging arms. The boys and one of the men plunged out with surf boards, ducking under or riding over the waves that did not suit them; then turning just before the wave that suited, they were carried along the shore leaning on their boards. The currents of the sea carried them past us looking on. Of course they knew all about them, and rough as the surf was, one of them had got past one of the lines of the breakers and tried fishing in some bottom both higher and less vexed. It was a pretty sight, the brown limbs and bodies all red in the sun and wet, coming out of the blue and white water like red flowers. The girls were yellower and more golden than the boys—less tanned I suppose.

They have been running about with less clothing, perhaps because the family is away. They left yesterday, and the daily life is the same. That is to say that only Tati and his family, including one of the boys whose holiday is prolonged, are here with us. The old lady (Hinaarii) the Queen (Marau), Miss Piri (pronounced Pri, short for Piritani, Britain), Miss Manihinihi, and the two young men all went off together; the ladies to spend some time at their house in Faaa, the most rustic, I believe, of their residences.

Pleasant as it is to talk with Tati or do nothing, I miss the ladies. The old chiefess is admirable, and is willing to talk to us of legends and stories with the utmost patience. I wish I had a portrait of her. She has a most characteristic and strong face, upon which at times comes a very sweet smile; as I saw yesterday, when she was asked which she preferred, Moorea, the island she comes from, or Tahiti, where her life has been mostly spent. “Tahiti!” she said decidedly, resuming in the inflection of her voice all the memories of a long life that has seen so much, and so much that is different and contradictory.

Queen Marau has been very affable and entertaining, telling us legends and stories; Miss Piri has been ailing, Miss Chiki, smiling. The women of the family are all extremely interesting, of various types, but each one with a charm of her own; from Marau’s strong face, fit for a queen, to Manihinihi’s bright cordial smile. And such beautiful voices as they have, and rich intonation! It is a remarkable family and a princely one. When you read the next few lines you will say that I am prejudiced about my own people, and anxious to have you admire them also; but I don’t care, I am glad to have such relations. For, a little before her departure, the old lady sent word that she wished to see us; and when we had come to sit beside her, she told us that she had decided to confer family names upon us, choosing the names which had given the power and which belonged to the ruling chief. Consequently Atamo takes the name of Tauraatua, Chief of Amo, meaning Bird Perch of God, and I of Teraaitua, Captain of that ilk, meaning Prince of the Deep. The old lady said all this with great sweetness and majesty, and we were greatly touched by the compliment.

This afternoon we went to see the little place which is Amo, and from which the Tevas were ruled. It is a small principality only fifteen fathoms long, and is at present all overrun with trees, orange and guava mostly. But not so long ago, as Tati remembers, it was as it had been before the little river changed its course and tore it up—a large paipai or stone platform, edged with stones carefully set, long ones above, others with oval ends nicely finished below (turtle heads they are called). Here lived Tauraatua, sixteen generations back, simply and frugally, refusing to change his habits with increased power, and contented with cheap fare. Here on the little platform he drank kava, with the river running by; and once, while lying under its influence (dead drunk, as it were), came near being surprised by the enemy. Some little while ago the tall cocoanut tree was still standing, which had served as a lookout and watch-tower against the enemy; and from which the watcher had descried the invader just in time to save the chief, and have him carried away like a precious parcel.

For Tati informs me that here kava was not the mild drink of the Samoan. It is apparently the same root to the sight, but whereas whole bowlfuls did not affect us, and whites are accustomed to it in Samoa, a glassful here, according to Tati, was and is a serious drink. Its charm lay apparently in the drowsiness and dreaminess it produced; people spoke of their having been dead under it, or of having seen things, as with opium or haschich (hemp), and to-day opium is killing the last of the Marquesans. It could be nothing more than to carry out more completely what seems to us fierce whites the meaning of these lands—to exist without effort, in indolence, and waiting for nothing to happen. The narcotic would condense it all, would bring a year of dreams into a something that could be felt like a single act, like an occurence that comes to you, instead of your making it, little by little, so that the beginning is forgotten at the very middle of the tale.

Such happiness was broken into by noise, and chiefs demanded, for their hours of kava influence, absolute silence about them; not even a cock might crow. One can understand the objection to it made here by the missionaries, which seen from our Samoan experience seemed useless and cruel. Another example of a momentary or local matter becoming built into a principle.

We went to see the new duchy; Adams took off an orange as a manner of investiture. I made an effort to see if I remembered it in a previous existence, but I did not. Tati remembered it, of course, and the place near by, all overgrown with great mango trees that have crowded over it, where his mother lived, and where the stone copings mark the base of the native house and a platform outside.

Later on Queen Marau told us of the trick by which the great Chief of Amo won influence, having claimed limits which were contested by powerful opponents. He left the decision to the great god Oro (whose temple, you know, was at Tautira), and where he was when a voice called from some unknown place and “gave him right.”

This is the story exactly as Queen Marau told it.

STORY OF THE LIMITS OF THE TEVAS

When Oro was Chief of Papara, Hurimaavehi of Vaieri was ruling over all this side (Mataeia). A woman brought about the overthrow of Vaieri and the headship of Papara.

Oro had a son whose friend, named Panee, was the father of a beautiful daughter, beautiful enough to attract the notice of all, as indeed it was the glory of the place to do. Hurimaavehi, having heard of her beauty, had her carried off at night, by men sent for the purpose. Her father, in his distress, not knowing what had befallen her, but guessing at it, sought her up to every limit. One day, while he was inquiring at the limit near Mataeia, he saw two men coming toward him.

“Where from?” said he.

“From Vaiari.”

“And how is Hurimaavehi, and all around him, and what new beauty have you in Vaiari?”

The two travellers answered. “If you talk of beauty, there is a wonder has sprung out there, and she belongs to Hurimaavehi.”

“She must be well treated?” inquired the old man suspiciously.

The two said, “No indeed! She has been passed down to the servants (Teutunarii), then sent to the dogs and the pigs and to the fish of the sea.”

So the father, like a madman, called out all manners of insult against Hurimaavehi; and he rushed away (like a madman) to the limits of the district of Vaiari, and meeting five people—Tite and four others (iatoais[13]) under Hurimaavehi, he killed them (“which,” says the teller of the story, “was a challenge”), and he gave his insults to be repeated by the travellers to the Chief Hurimaavehi. So that Hurimaavehi was incensed, and came right over to Papara with his people.

Now the girl’s father had told his friend, the son of Oro, that Hurimaavehi would be coming to attack, and why. And the son of Oro said, “Come with me”; and they went to his father Oro and told him, how Hurimaavehi was coming to kill them, and why.

Oro said to his son, “Hide under this marae” (the marae whose remains or rather whose place we saw at Amo), and to the other, “Do you go up this tree” (the famous cocoanut that served as a watch-tower), “and when he comes back attack and beat him.” He came with his men, they beat him, and Hurimaavehi ran off, with Oro and all his men after him, following on and taking possession of every limit, until he came to Teriitua. Then Teriitua said, “No further; this belongs to me.” (Hitiaa.)

Then the limit was decided, as the famous story tells.

This is the downfall of Vaiari and the rise of Papara.

And the girl, having served her purpose of introducing the war, steps out of the story.

The daughter of Panee, whose fame for beauty brought on this trouble to herself and subsequent enlargement of her people, was, as the story shows, known as a beauty far from home. Our brown ancestors admire beauty no less than other people; and looked upon it, as we do in many cases, as a good instrument, besides the credit to the family and the favour that goes with the possession of any social power. But you must always remember that our brown forefathers were eminently socialistic, or rather communistic, as their relatives all over the Pacific are still. Never forget this for a moment, whenever you think of them or read about them or any habits of theirs. We have developed from that point to a degree of individualism that can with difficulty understand what communism means. So that we are easily deluded and over-pleased, or horrified, when like views and systems are proposed in the western world for our descendants.

Now then, the family, in the case of a lovely brown maiden, would not only be her own family (as we call it directly), but spread further and back, in all sorts of relatives, and from that spread out to the village and the tribe; so that her beauty would be a credit to the whole place. Hence she would become a show-piece; and her immediate parents, with the good-will of the community, would guard her beauty, would feed her well and daintily, to make her smooth and fat; would keep her out of the sun that might darken her skin, fairer than that of others, if still brown to our snow-blinded eyes.

She would then occasionally be seen; and it was considered a proper and justifiable extravagance for even a lesser person to have a paipai, or stone exterior foundation to his house, upon which his fair child could be seen. And at certain intervals she would take her bath in public with others, and her physical charms be fairly judged. Nor must we think that all this is brutal—no more than with us to-day.

The girl was also judged by her manners, her courtesy and her modesty; for she thought no more of showing her legs than do our young women of showing their necks and bosoms and backs; and she had the same notion that they have that there are strict limits—even though hers might not be ours. You will remember, perhaps, in early accounts, the pretty description of women playing on the shore or in the water, at games of ball, as did Nausicaa in the days of Ulysses.

Many times have I heard allusions to the habit of keeping in one house a number of the girls together, beauties of the place. And if I remember right, it was to such a residence that the celebrated Turi contrived to pass, notwithstanding the difficulties put in his way—difficulties all the more interesting as mere delays; for the young women had heard of his exploits and expected as much of him. But then, if I remember also, he lived in those days when people, especially the heroes of tales, could be gifted with the power of changing their forms at will. And who could have guessed in the decrepit or leprous old man, pitied for his sorrows by the tender women, the gay Lothario heard of through all islands. Still less could he be discovered in the fish that was caught by the old women who supplied the women’s house with food. He it was who dug the great tunnel through the mountain, in order to approach his love without detection—her who was Ahupu Vahine of Taiarapu, of whom Stevenson, in the notes of his Ballads, says that he has not yet been able to find out who she was. Why! there is a whole “Chronique Scandaleuse” of that period of earliest history.

Oro then belonged to the younger Vaiari, and seized the power of the older branch.

Let us take up the story as he pursues his enemy into the territory of Teriitua, Chief of Hitiaa, who checked his advance, disputing, most naturally, the limits that were being conquered. So that they left the decision to the Gods, as I understand, upon Oro’s proposal.[14]

Upon a day appointed they met for the invocation; but Oro had determined to help himself that he might be helped; as many pious men have done and will do again. A friend of his, whom tradition names Aia, was concealed carefully in a hole or hollow place, near the disputed boundary. Teriitua’s call upon his gods, being met only by the silence of the woods, Oro called out, pointing out, I suppose, what he wished, “Is it here?” And his friend answered, “It is here.”

The cause of Oro won; a little, perhaps, because according to all tradition, he was a doughty warrior who intended to have his way.

We now belong to both the “Inner” and “Outer” Teva: Te Teva Iuta and Te Teva Itai, the whole eight, whose clans reached all down this side of the island, and into the next; for we have been adopted twice, both at Tautira, and here—into the two divisions.

The place has now for us an increased charm; a still more subtle influence envelops me when I think that this is the home of Amo and Oberea, who first met Wallis and Cook; and as I look from the violet beds of one of the princesses to the solemn hills of dark green crowned with cloud, I wonder if somewhere there may be the hidden tomb of Oberea, now my ancestress, the quiet familiar surroundings became solemn with this great reminder of the mountains and the ocean that faces them.

I listen now, with a curiously new interest, to the explanations of the meanings of landmarks and to their names full of associations for the Teva line. We have it explained to us that each chief had a marae, a temple associated with the sacredness of his name; and many rules concerning its foundation; and the places within it reserved to chiefs through heredity and heredity alone.

Each chief had also a moua or mountain; an Otu or cape or point of land; a Tahua or gathering-place, from which he ruled. Every point, says the island proverb, has a chief.

For the Teva the oldest marae was Farepua in Vaiari, from which, by taking a stone from it, Manutunu, the husband of the fair Hototu, mother of the first Teva, founded the marae of Punaauia for his son. (He called it so because of his uncle, who dead was rolled up like a fish—iia.)

From these two maraes, many maraes along the coast, and in Moorea took their origin and proved the family descent. The Moua of Papara was Tamaiti; its Outu was Monomano; its Tahua, Poreho; its marae, Tooarai. Our adopted mother’s name is Teriitere Itooarai, which you will remember is the name of the son of Oberea and Amo.

Taputuarai in the small district of Amo was the original marae of Papara, and from that Amo took the stones to build the marae of Tooarai on the point of Mahaiatea.

A poem traditional in the family gives expression to the value of these points—to the attachment to and desire to be near them again, in the mind of an exile, one of the Papara family. The family seems to have been represented by the Aromaiterai and the Teriterai, one of whom ruled in the absence of the other.

How far back this was composed, nor exactly how it happened that one brother, Aromaiterai, was banished, I do not know. One or other branch seems to have been always jealous of the other; but in this case one Aromaiterai was banished and forbidden to make himself known. He was sent into the peninsula to Mataoa, from which place he could see across the water the land of Papara and its hills and cape. The poem which he composed, and which is dear to the Tevas, revealed his identity:

LAMENT OF AROMAITERAI

From Mataoa I took to my own land Tianina, my mount Tearatapu, my valley Temaite, my “drove of pigs” on the Nioarahi.[15]

The dews have fallen on the mountain and they have spread my cloak.[16]Rains, clear away, that I may look at my home! Aue! Aue! the wall of my dear land! The two thrones of Mataoa[17] open their arms to me Temarii (or Amo).

No one will ever know how my heart yearns for my mount of Tamaiti.[18]

Could anything be finer than the rallying cry of the Tevas: