For a line running back to origins confused with the brute forces of the world; originating with divine creatures half animal—with the princes of double bodies, half fish, half man, what more poetic reminder of the intimacy with parental nature.

I sometimes think of our chiefess as being able to feel with Phaedra, that the encompassing world is full of her ancestry.[19]

And here the heroic line brought down through ages to the present day, brings back to my mind the tradition that the lines of the fabulous Homeric heroes were carried into the new Christian world as far as the days of St. Jerome. Nor was the suggestion of the thought of Phaedra, claiming kinship with the universe, so far from the echo of the name of Queen Marau, whose further name is Taaroa, the great first god whose relation to the world is given in the verses:

The records of the past are all in words handed down; and the absence of any outer form to antiquity makes me seek it all the more in the nature which surrounds me, in the imaginary presence of the people who lived within it.

One great disappointment awaited me: I had hoped to find some form in the great marae or temple built by Oberea, in her pride of place, which Cook speaks of as the principal building of the island, and describes as an imposing monument. We found it only a vast mass of loose coral stones, treacherous to the foot and retaining but a vague and unimpressive outline. Still it was upon the shore, by the beautiful sea, and the funereal aito or ironwood trees sacred to temples still grew upon it. Stewart, the planter who for a term of years was able to keep up a great estate, at the head of a company behind him, planned on a grand scale, and who then failed, was allowed to use the stones of the marae as a quarry for his roads and walls. Even before that time neglect and the destruction brought about by the enmities to the old paganism must have changed its shape and destroyed its outline. To-day it is impossible to recognize the form described by Cook. It was made, he says, of a series of steps rising in pyramid way, to a top layer ridged like a roof; and its long sides, which hollowed in slightly, were some two hundred and thirty feet in length. Now it is a sad ruin, shapeless and barbarous.

As I left it I remembered that Moerenhout, visiting here some sixty years ago, says that few natives except the great Chief Tati saw without superstitious fear the cutting down of the majestic trees which had witnessed for centuries the ceremonies of the forbidden worship, and had survived the decadence of the temples which they adorned. When he adds, the great trees had been cut down which shaded the marae further inland, specially sacred to the chiefs of Papara, which had been that of Tati himself and of his children, a rumour spread about the country that the water of the little river, the river that ran through our ancestral domain of Amo, had reddened, and blood had trickled from the trunks of the prostrate trees.

Last month, at Tautira, the absence of all vestiges of the great marae of the God Oro, was more impressive than the formless mass of stone associated with the name of Oberea. It is always a disappointment to notice how little this race has turned to the arts of form. I mean this race as I have seen it, in Samoa and in Tahiti. Elsewhere it may have done something, but here the form of music only has been reached—the earliest mode of expression. And though the Polynesian still shows good taste in colour and choice in arrangement, he seems to have taken but the very first steps in the adornment of surfaces or the arrangement of masses. It is possible that there is something strenuous and needing sustained effort in the plastic arts which these sensuous races, urged by no contrarieties to find some escape out of the present, were too indolent and contented to achieve.

I have made many notes that I shall string together as I best can; but I am ineffably lazy, and this is the place for me in the house of Tati. I sleep in the rooms where his great-uncle Tati, the great Chief, died: he who ruled here at the beginning of the new dispensation, who was a child in the days of the first discoverers, and who lived well into the fifties. He was saved from the massacre of the Papara family when a child, through some recognition of the behaviour of Manea the high priest when he saved the pride of Tetuanui in her contest with the pride of Oberea.

So that the revenge of Tetuanui spared this boy, who became an important man representing the great Teva house. But that was only after the son of Amo and Oberea had died by accident, leaving to the Pomaré Chief no equal rival; and after Tati’s brother Opufara had died in battle bravely defending the Pagan side against the Pomaré, helped by the rifles of the Christians.

Tati had apparently refused to avail himself of the offer of Pomaré, before his death, to appoint him regent, nor did he consent to our chiefess being made queen: for he seems in many ways to have asked for the best interests of his nation, and always with higher motives. There are interesting descriptions of his influence and of his dramatic eloquence, which Moerenhout compares to the action of Talma, the greatest of French actors. I read about him in Moerenhout’s volumes; I make sketches during the day, and talk to the Tati of this moment, enjoying the sound of his voice and his laugh, and the freedom of the children, and the movement of the servants.

There is one who is always hard at work doing everything, who is really Marau’s, a girl of good family, a sort of relation of mine now, and who is called Pupuri (if I catch it right), “Blonde”; and she is blond; her hair is absolutely gold, and when she has her back turned and her hair down you would suppose some foreign visitor from northernmost Europe. She is fair, a little red, like an Irish woman, with whitish lashes, and eyes that do not stand the light well.

Madame sits at one end of the piazza; the ladies flit in and out of their rooms and sometimes talk to us.

Next to our house, where some women have beds and others mats for sleeping, there are other houses for cooking, and for

servants who are in reality dependents. Sometimes members of the family eat there, in native fashion, of native cooking, instead of coming to the table at which we sit on one end of the verandah. Near by is a little garden growing on what was once the enclosure of a house; and the little river runs rapidly a few yards off, hidden in part by trees; at which women go down to wash, and which men and boys cross to bathe, and in which splash the horses when they are washed in the morning. It is all delightful and rustic.

We are arranging with Tati about going to Moorea, the island opposite Tahiti, where we can be in the mountains that come right down to the water.

As the island makes a perfect triangle, the clustering together of its mountain peaks, seen from Papeete, used to look like some background of early Venetian pictures, inspired by the Dolomites that Titian knew when a boy. Tati has a plantation and house there to which we shall go; and the family are strong in the island, having antique rights and inheritances in different districts.

We shall stay only a few days here, and then sail or row across to the fantastic island that has made a distance of blue and gold to our days in Papeete, and behind which the sunsets used to sink in every variety of indescribable splendour or delicacy.

Papeete, May 22, 1891.

We did not leave by the steamer; by some curious chance unknown before, it was filled with passengers. It is true that it does not take a large number to fill it. We feared discomfort, and hurrying back from Moorea, we nevertheless lazily let it get away from the point on the coast to which it had gone for its cargo of oranges. Whether or no Tauraatua had already presented to his mind the alternative that opened to us I do not know, but we turned at once to a longer sea trip and a less probable one: to taking a little schooner that had just come from Raiatea, and getting its captain to carry us to Fiji. Thus we should also now be able to call at the leeward islands, Raiatea, Huahine, and Bora Bora, and leave, as it were, our cards. For it seems sad enough to give up the Marquesas; especially as every day we hear something in detail about them. Captain Hart tells us too that there is one Typee perhaps still alive; and gives me something of the story of a savage whose photograph is on the bookcase of his office—a gentleman whom Stevenson met, and a lover of human flesh. Indeed, the story goes, that once upon a time he had had thoughts of dining upon the captain—after a previous murder, of course. Now, to know a cannibal and perhaps to become his brother—for that would be a natural result of his acquaintance, as our relationship is just now in

demand through these latitudes—is an awful temptation. Were there anything more to it—were there anything said that might lead one to believe that he or any other such might really become known and understood—perhaps might one think that the two weeks’ sail against the wind would not be too much sea to travel over for a result. But I can make out no such probability from any cross-questioning that I have been able to conduct; and the portrait of the indigène in question suggests a heavy, sullen brutality not at all romantic. I should not care to use him as a model for any picture of Typee, where the eating of man was apparently something like a duty or a necessity, not a mere gourmet liking for a certain richness of taste. No; we need, after all, more inducement than that one.

The portrait of the Queen is more of an invitation: there is something in her face and the impression we receive from “Prince” Stanislas Moanatini that warrants that we shall be well treated.

Still we are trying to get away in this other direction; that way at least the winds are in our favour, and two weeks’ sailing would see us in Fiji or near it; and then in a few weeks more we might be on our return homeward. For all considered, we must make up our minds either to let this thing go on, and drift about the South Seas, taking up the island groups one by one, as chance will have it, or we must make a stern choice and hold to that. And that choice points more and more to our saying good-bye to these eastern islands, and to determining that we have really seen Brown Polynesia, even if it be only in these three groups, and that the rest is a matter of detail. But it may not be so easy to leave by that little schooner or by any other.

There is a demand for small schooners—that is to say, they have to go around to the groups to pick up cargoes; and the one German firm whose boat runs near enough would like to put the screws on to the uttermost. More Germanico, even money is not enough—there must be no equality—and the last alternative so far has been the offer of a passage in a little boat, with other passengers, native women, and a full cargo; which means every available space filled (so that we would merely have our berths to lie in); and that passage to certain places first, and then afterward, when the schooner has discharged its cargo at leisure, to take us from the last point to Fiji. For these discomforts we should have to pay $2,700, within $300 of the value of the schooner. The other passengers would pay $15, which would be the average value. We offered $3,000 for the use of another schooner, having ascertained that she was unprofitable to the same owner; to which he answered by sending her off; and told us that upon conditions of a like nature we might have her by and by. The place develops curious sides of what is called business; and this may be an example. Fancy anywhere else a person offered the full value of a bit of non-productive property for a few weeks’ rent, and hesitating so as to couple difficult conditions with his leave. But I think our German will come short of his enormous profit: the steamer that brings cattle here from Auckland and carries back fruit will probably be our choice; it is only waiting three weeks more, and economizing several hundred dollars a week—never a cruel thing to endure.

And our stay is such an easy thing; it is only because neither of us has the future before him, but on the contrary, a considerable past filled with the habit of work, that we make the slightest effort to resist our contentment. The weather is such as people might travel far to seek: an equable warmth, a little coolness at night and in the morning, an evenness that makes a couple of degrees count for a great deal, plenty of moving air, a beautiful sea, a beautiful sky, and a beautiful distance at all hours of the day and even of the moonlit nights.

The Moorea lies in front of us, on half of the horizon; the little shipping blocks up part of the space; grass-covered quays are before us, shaded with trees under which pass groups of natives or straggling French soldiers and sailors, or the few residents that live this way. At times all is silent and solitary; at others carts roll noisily; horses, ridden wildly by native boys, canter past, or some schooner comes in and unloads almost in front of us. Great excitement comes upon us with these arrivals, far greater than with the arrival or departure of the war steamer that serves to carry about the Governor or officials on tours of inspection, and whose presence brings the sunset gun, saluted by the customary refrain of the clarion, and the eight o’clock gun with another blast, as if reporting that the discharge had struck.

Lately too we have been interested in the arrival of Narii Salmon in his boat from the Pomotus, bringing other members of the family. This impending arrival has brought several times to our verandah the two younger ladies of the family, to scan the distance with our glasses. Since the night when Narii ran in, passing the reef in the twilight, our beautiful new sisters have been less frequent. It was a pretty event, the arrival of the little boat, for which others had daily been mistaken; the settling of its identity by its marks; the recognition of its owner by its sailing bravely in through the pass in the dark; then the calls from the shore to know if it were he for sure, and who was on board; and the boats hurrying out and coming back, all in a silence so great that the slightest rustle of sail or cordage or steps on deck could be distinctly heard.

At times the only sound is the wavering fall of the little column of water that drips from the mouth of a fountain into the sea—to which we go for our supply of pure water. Its threads, thicker or thinner, with the pulsations of the headstream thousands of feet far back, or with the draught of the wind, make a corded silver fan against the blue sea during the day; in the night a line of tinted light.

These are fine days; but our first stay after our return from Moorea ran over a week of wet weather that kept all asoak, filled the house with damp and mould, and carried into and about it disagreeable things taking refuge in comparative dryness: the centipede that runs away, but bites if interfered with; the scorpion that lurks around dark corners, and scuttles off harmlessly enough, but looking like a child’s dream of a devil. The cockroach seems to rule over them, however, and to drive them away; and as the scorpion appears rarely in the house, and only in the verandah or outhouses, we have been lucky. Tauraatua has been bitten, but after a sharp pain like a cut, the matter has faded away. The memory is there, however, and I am glad of the changed weather. Our house, from whose verandah we look upon the sea across the road, and the reef near the horizon and Moorea swimming in light, is the historic consulate empty of the Consul, whose place we take, his duties only being filled by Captain Hart, the Vice-Consul.

Behind us, across the yard, is our dear old Chiefess’s home, where the Queen, Marau, and her sisters Piri and Manihinihi reside; so that we are near our new family, and we call in as often as our fears of intrusion may allow, or need of society, or freedom from so-called occupation. Tauraatua goes over more than I do; he has given up painting, and has returned to congenial and accustomed studies, by working at the genealogy of our new family, and helping to get it into written shape.

For the old lady, Hinaarii, has begun to open the registers of memory, and to correct and make clear things kept obscure, partly from purpose as defences, partly from kindly motives toward others; partly because it is written that memories must perish and the past continually fade and disappear, in part at least. Genealogy, you know, in the South Seas, indicates not only one’s standing but one’s rights to land. Nothing is ever sold, nothing alienated by any law; so that in one’s name and in the names of one’s relations are the title deeds of what one has. And now the French Government, in its anxiety to extend all benefits of civilization, and to make all its peoples equals has desired to have everything put into proper shape; and as in Samoa, so everybody here must put in his claim to the land, which thus will be duly recorded for good and all. For never again will be the time when a family might claim the fruit of a branch of a given tree. These genealogies, kept by hearsay, will be unfolded to the public, so far as needed, and claims settled; there will be no need of concealment, no fear that some side relation, in a little country, where such relationship must exist, will know enough to make out a tree of his own and come in with some claim. Everything conspires for getting some definite record just before the last veil closes over a past already dim enough. And Marau and Moetia are writing out songs and legends, and may be inspired, if their ardour can continue, to help to save something.

Some years ago King Kalakaua of Hawaii had wished to obtain the traditions and genealogies; but the old lady had never been favourable; so that we feel that at least we have done no harm to the family, at least in our western notions, since we may help to save its records.

It is a part of the charm of Tahiti that with it there is a history: that it has been the type of the oceanic island in story; that the names of Cook and Bougainville and Wallis and Bligh belong to it most especially; that from it have radiated other stories: the expeditions of the mutineers of the Bounty, and the missionary enterprises that have gone through the Pacific.

With its discovery begins the interest that awoke Europe by the apparent realization of man in his earliest life—a life that recalled at least the silver if not the golden age. Here men and women made a beautiful race, living free from the oppression of nature, and at first sight also free from the cruel and terrible superstitions of many savage tribes. I have known people who could recall the joyous impressions made upon them by these stories of new paradises, only just opened; and both Wallis’s and Bougainville’s short and official reports are bathed in a feeling of admiration, that takes no definite form, but refers both to the people and the place and the gentleness of the welcome.

That early figure of Purea (Oberea) the Queen, for whom Wallis shed tears in leaving, remains the type of the South Sea woman. With Cook she is also inseparably associated and the anger of the first missionaries with her only serves to complete and certify the character. One will always remember the imposing person who, after the terrors of the first mistaken struggle, approached Wallis with the dignity he describes, welcomed him and took care of him, even, as he says, to carrying him, since he was ill, in her arms, as if he were a child. One would like to go back in mind to the time, if it were possible to realize the thoughts that must have come upon Oberea and Amo her husband on this appearance of the great ship and the strange men—a floating island as they first thought it, which they attacked as a portent of ill. Something like this will be felt by our descendants when from some distant planet the first discoverers shall drop on earth. And so Amo and Oberea come in and out of the stories of the first discoverers, even until forty years after, when the missionaries of the Duff speak of the poor lady with harsh words and (1799-1800) no pity for her frailties.

Now Oberea (Purea) was our old Chiefess’s great-great-grand-aunt, as Amo was her great-great-grand-uncle; and now, with one remove further, she is ours by adoption.[20] (You must ever remember that we belong to Amo; that is the special name of place attached to ours.)

And everything that concerns the family of the Tevas interests us exceedingly. Does it not interest you also? This living connection with the indefinite archaic past, does it not bring back the freshness of early days, in which, reading of the voyages, our minds shaped pictures of what these places and their people were? Now for me it is a pleasure, half touching, half absurd, to look upon the queer pictures of the little place we lived in at the end of Uponohu Bay, as it is represented in the prints of Cook’s voyages, or the later one of the Duff; that place where Melville last lived during his last days on Moorea, as he tells in “Omoo”; and then to think of my own sketches, and the different eyes with which I must have seen it. In the same way, or a similar way, my impressions of to-day become confused and connected with these old printed records of the last century, until I seem to be treading the very turf that the first discoverers walked on, and to be shaded by the very trees.

I have been drawing and painting somewhat lately, so I have been able to take fewer notes than Tauraatua. He is working assiduously, partly because he is engaged in congenial work, partly to urge Marau to go on and write her memoirs, which would then go back to a record of her ancestors. I, on my part, could not do it so well; and I am busy at my drawings, trifling as they are. But I regret it, as I see less of our neighbours, all of whom have their various degrees of charm.

But I like to gather in without strict order these records and memories, even at the risk of Marau’s supposing that I am going to put into verse the extremely difficult poems she recites to us. This idea of hers is evidently a devilish suggestion of Tauraatua, who thereby shares the responsibility or throws

it off on me at will. Still I shall transcribe into prose some of the poems at least, to please you. They are woven into the story of the family and form part of its record, if one may say so; some of these form parts of methods of address, if one might so call it—that is to say, of the poems or words in order recited upon occasions of visiting, or that serve as tribe cries and slogans. So with the verses connected with the name of Tauraatua that are handed down. The explanations may (and do) embrouiller or confuse it; they did for me; but they make it all the more authentic, if I may so say, because all songs handed down and familiar must receive varying glosses. Where one sees, for instance, a love song, another sees a song of war. The Tauraatua of that far back day was enamoured of a fair maiden (her name was Maraeura) and lived with or near her. This poem, which is an appeal to him to return to duty or to home, or to wake him from a dream, is supposed to be the call of the bird messenger and his answer:

Of this translation Tati made mincemeat one evening, describing as frivolous the feminine connection, and giving the whole a martial character. The few lines he changes I shall not give here in full; suffice it that he ends with this, which is fine enough:

I shall not have time to reconcile the versions, but Moetia seems impressed with the possibility of getting these things translated; and if all will unite, even if two versions are made, the songs will at least be saved.

I have received from Marau two poems: one about a girl asked to wed an old chief, one in honour of Pomaré; but Adams has become more Teva than the Tevas, and will not note it.

And as a woman has come again into the story, as she has done often with the Tevas, for good and ill, let us go back to Oberea, the Teva princess whom Wallis first met, and met almost by chance, for she and her husband Amo were on a visit to the place where Wallis anchored and landed, and by this accident helped to displace later the centre of power, as has always happened where the white man has made his harbour.

Oberea was on a visit to Haapape, where is the anchorage of Matavai; its chief Tutaharii. Tutaha (in Wallis’s book) was connected with the Papara family to which Amo, Oberea’s husband, belonged (and stripped, as a sign of respect, in presence of Amo and his little son Teriitere).

The Tevas, whom Amo and Oberea represented, held the political supremacy of Tahiti. Their lands were further down the coast to the south than the districts which the first discoverers first knew, and separated from them by inimical chiefs, momentarily quiescent from fear and doubt. They were especially the Purionu and Teaharo, from whom the first discoverers received a great part of their information; then came, on the west coast, the little district of Faaa (or Tefanai Ahurai), from which came Oberea (Purea; her proper name, Tevahine Avioroha i Ahurai), the daughter of its chief, Teriivaetua.

Then came a large district known as the Oropaa, consisting of Paea, adjoining Papara, the chief place of the Tevas, and of Punavia, both these connected by family alliances with the Tevas.

The Tevas (and family) held after them, further to the south, the whole south of the main island, and the whole of that half island called Taiarapu, which joins the main island at the narrow Isthmus of Taravao. The east was divided into three districts, but had no common head. Hence the Tevas, usually well combined, with strong clan feelings that last until to-day, controlled all the south and west of the island and Taiarapu, or two thirds of the population, and had only themselves to blame when deprived of their ascendency.

The Tevas were divided, as they still are on the map to-day, into Inner and Outer Tevas; the Outer Tevas on Taiarapu (into which we were adopted by Ori), and the Inner Tevas on the main island (into which we were adopted by our good chiefess of Papara). These made the eight Tevas. Their origin, like that of all clans, is hidden in the night of legend, with the old myths of a semi-divine ancestor and an earthly mother.

And as the women were to play a great part in the history of the Tevas, it is but fair to begin, then, with that part of the life of Queen Hototu that made them.

THE ORIGIN OF THE TEVAS

This, the earliest of the traditions of the family, was told me at different times by Queen Marau.

At certain hours Tauraatua goes to the low cottage behind our house, that is open toward the King’s palace and the government house, but is entirely shut in by trees that fill the little garden, and which has a strange resemblance to many a little American home and is all the more wonderfully unreal. Then the Queen comes from some inner apartment and repeats the legends, poems and genealogies, and one or more of the sisters are often there and add comments or contradiction. During our absence the ladies are supposed to have prepared the material and to have arranged what documents they have, so that in many cases what little I shall quote will be the very words of our royal historian. Sometimes in early evening the Queen has walked down to the shore with her sister Manihinihi, and, sitting on the rocks under the lofty trees, answered my questions about these early ancestors. I can tell you the bald story. I cannot give you with it all that would have made any old story charming—the faces and forms of my instructors, their beautiful voices, the slight wash of the sea into which Manihinihi sometimes put her bare foot, the wonderful stillness, the slight rush of the surf far out on the reef, the light of the afterglow, the blue ocean far away, the mountains of ancestral Moorea lit up after sundown, the shadows of the big trees moving over the water, and on our side right above us the great heights of the Aorai appearing and disappearing behind the many coloured clouds. At such moments I could forget for the present the little meannesses introduced by us Europeans and feel as if I were back in the time when my name was Teraaitua.

They were my ancestors in fairyland of whom fairy stories were being told, and even the absurdities had the same charm of the stories of our nurseries which they so much resembled.

The great ancestress Hototu, from whom come all the Teva, was the first queen of Vaieri. She married Temanutunu,[23] the first king of Punaauia. All this is in the furthest of historical records, as you will see by what happened to this king and queen at the time when gods and men and animals were not divided as they are to-day, or when, as in the Greek stories, the gods took the shapes of men or beasts to come and go more easily in this lower world which they had begun to desert.

In the course of time this king left the island and made an

expedition to the far-away Paumotu (pr. Pomotu). It is said that he went to obtain the precious red feathers that have always had a mysterious value to South Sea Islanders, and that he meant them for the maro ura or royal red girdle of his son, for he had a son by Hototu who was named Terii te Moanarao. The investiture with the girdle, red or white, according to circumstances, has the same value as our form of crowning, and took place as a solemn occasion in the ancestral temple or marae of these islands of the South Sea, but the red girdle seemed even in some Samoan lore to have an ancient meaning of royalty; I remember Mataafa, the great chief, asking me why the English Consul wore the red silk sash which he probably affected in his dress as being of an agreeable colour.

While the king was far away in the pursuit of these red feathers to be gathered, perhaps, one by one, the queen Hototu travelled into the adjoining country of Papara, where we were the past month, and there she met in some way the mysterious personage, Paparuiia.[24] With this wonderful creature the queen was well pleased so that from them was born a son who later was called Teva, but this is anticipating.

This was the time as we have told you when men and animals and gods were mixed, and this great ancestor of the Tevas was evidently some form of god. The story came to an end in a sudden way. While the king was still away, his dog Pihoro returned, and finding the queen he ran up to her and fawned upon her to the jealous disgust of Tino iia, one half of whom said to the other, “she cares for that dog more than for me. See how he caresses her!”

So then he arose and departed in anger, telling her, however, that she would bear a son whom she should call Teva: that for this son he had built a temple at Mataua, and that there he should wear the maro tea, the white or yellow girdle, the chiefs of Punauia or Vaiari, who in this case were the king and queen, being the only ones that had the right to the maro ura, the red maro or girdle, for which you will remember that the king was hunting. Then he departed and was met by Temanutunu, the husband who had landed at Vairoa, and who entreated him to return. He refused just as the two Shark-princes, of whom I told you at Vaima, the little river that ran so clear near Taravao, refused another husband for a similar reason, saying that his wife was a woman too fond of dogs. “Vahine na te uri” (woman to the dogs). When I asked if he never came back, the queen, or was it Moetia, told me that since that day the man-fish had been seen many times.

The dog is however much connected with the Papara family, and his presence is occasionally felt. Tati the brother of the queen told some stories of him. One of these stories refers to what happened to Narii when a child. His mother had him with her at the occasion of the building of a bridge near Papara. There were many hundred people there. Tati was there with his two nurses according to custom, and Narii had also the two who had charge of him. At evening one of the nurses saw something like a dog run up a tree above them, and into the branches, and at the same time something waved from him like rags. Just then the child was drawn from the arms that held him, his mother’s, but something grasped him firmly, while a ball of fire rushed out above him and went on to the sea some quarter of a mile distant. So many people saw part of this, namely, the ball of fire that there was no doubt of it.

Nor must I forget to say that all about Papara there is a good deal in the way of ghosts or queer sights. For instance, just beyond the little enclosure of our hereditary Amo, where the little sluggish river runs in the woods beyond the ancient stone foundation, evergrown with trees, there are spaces where occasionally the figure of a man appears and disappears through the trees, and old rags of clothing flitter behind him. There last Saturday, while two men were at work, what at I don’t know, perhaps looking after vanilla, one of them looked up and saw on the face of the little cliff, a small hole, not noticed before, out of which at once stepped an old man dressed partly in an ancient manner, who dusted his clothing as he got erect and then disappeared. The two men went to the spot and found the hole. There was some talk of enlarging it and digging into it, but the discoverer objected so strongly, and has still kept up his objection so well that nothing more has happened.

The shark is connected with our cousin Ariie’s family at Tautira and has still power with them. Not so long ago Ariie’s mother came here worn out and dusty, having ridden instead of having been carried in her canoe as usual. She told the following story—she had intended to come but had declined to bring her daughter with her. Now her daughter is a believer in the shark, and she thereupon told her mother that she should not get off. Nothing would induce her to say more but the mother was rowed up inside the reef as we had been on the same course along the coast of Pueu. I don’t know exactly where it was, but somewhere in the evening the rowers complained that their path was obstructed by a large shark. The old lady ordered them to row on; as they did so she looked up from the bottom of the boat where she lay with her head wrapped up in the usual loin-cloth or pareu. She saw before them, an enormous shark, lying at right angles to the boat, partly out of the water, and all along his back a row of lights like lamps lit up the water. Unwillingly the men obeyed her orders to row on and struck the fish full on the side without making it move away, the boat running up on his back. Then she determined to return and when she got home, rebuked her daughter angrily, for she knew that it was her daughter who had done this, and rather than yield to her she had come the whole way with horses. Tati says the girl is known to have power that way and that she calls upon this protector when she is angry. Upon such occasions a special odour easily to be recognized as the smell of the shark fills the air. As far as I can see the shark is at least a cousinly god to us, somewhat of a relation and protector, and henceforth, I think as I suggested above, we ought to be safe from him at sea.

As in the story of the ancestress, Queen Hototu, so important and aristocratic, freedom could belong to women where descent and inheritance placed her above others. Daughters transferred to their children rank and title, and consequently property, and in fault of other heirs could become chief. The mother, therefore, of an heiress to a title was another chief even to her husband, and had privileges that he could not have; for instance, a seat in the family temple. All this she transmitted to her child.

The mother of our old chiefess was known by at least thirteen different names, each of which was a title, each of which conveyed land; so she was, for instance, Marama in Moorea and owned almost all the island; so she was Aromaiterai in Papara. This investiture would be received for a child, as child to a chief, would be carried to the family temple to be made sacred, as was done in this case, thirteen different temples having received the child, the mother of our chiefess. As in all Polynesia the Arii or chiefs were more or less sacred as was the ground upon which they rested; but that was only among their own connections. There the inferior chiefs, men or women, out of respect stripped themselves down to the waist. That is why Captain Wallis relates that Tutaha as well as Vairatoa, stripped in the presence of Amo, our ancestor, and his little son. Why exactly the wife of Vairatoa uncovered herself up to the waist when she presented cloth to Wallis, I have not been exactly able to find out, but Tati says it was probably from the same notion of very great respect.

So you see the connection of the marae with the chieftain’s power; a knowledge of maraes and of the origin and descent of families is intimately connected. Each family had its stone in the maraes where it claimed family worship.

The Teva’s original marae is said to be that of Opooa in the sacred island of Raiatea; but their own tradition makes it, as I have said, at Mataua, where the head of the Tevas wore the maro tea.

When Temanutunu, the husband of Hototu, mother of Teva, brought back the red feathers from the Pomotus, to be worn in marae by his son, he founded the temple or marae of Punaauia. Thus the story indicates that Vaiari and Papeari were the original centres, and Punauia and Papara chiefs wore the red or yellow girdle in right of descent from Vaiari. We must understand that power did not reside in the mere wearing of this girdle; it was only a symbol of the power of descent which represented alliances of families in a land where blood was everything, where a chiefess killed her child if not of high enough birth.

Do you remember, or have you read, in the “Voyage of the Duff,” the terrible time the missionaries had with “Iddeah,” the wife of the older Pomaré? It is almost a pity not to quote it in full; and if I had the “Voyage” by me I should do so. Like Oberea, she was more or less separated from her husband, and had, like the great Catherine or the great Elizabeth, a young favourite who went about with her everywhere, as the missionaries saw. He was of low blood; hence the necessity of putting the child to death; and as all this was openly understood, the missionaries undertook to persuade “Iddeah” (as the missionaries called her) to abandon the hereditary notion. Notwithstanding every exhortation, she declined to do so, and killed her child according to custom; though like a politic person, she promised not to do so again. And I have told you about the late Queen Pomaré and her affairs.

Hence again, everywhere the marae comes into the story of the islands; with it, of course, begins the families—no marae, no family—and with the building of the greatest marae of all, the one that Cook saw and described in its new importance, the power of the Tevas culminated and was broken forever. You know that we saw its ruins on the beach of Atimaono, and walked up the crumbling slopes of coral, with Pri and Winfred Brander, whose ancestors built the family temple.

The pride of the Tevas, the pride of Oberea, brought on the revenge of the offended. But that part of the story I must put off, and tell you some of those that go further back.

The Tevas were proud and domineering, but the family of Papara, of which was Amo, and where flourished Oberea his wife, were still more so; for Papara was the leader politically. Historically the chieftainesses of Vaiari and Punaauia, as we saw by the story of the origin of the Tevas, were older and of greater dignity; but it was the Chief of Papara who called out the Tevas, who presided over them, and who alone had the right to order human sacrifices for the clans.

There were, as you know, eight Tevas, inner and outer, the inner ones Papara, Atimaono, Mataiae, and Papeari; the four outer ones, the four districts of the peninsula of Taiarapu; Paea and Punaauia were tributary. The origin of this limitation, the origin of this power, goes back to some great and uncertain distance which I have not been able to ascertain, but it may be a thousand years back or not more than five or six hundred. That could perhaps be determined more closely by a more extended inquiry. At that time Papara was subject or tributary to Vaiari, and when Mataiea belonged to the Chief of Vaiari.

For this liberation of Papara, and placing it at the head of the Tevas, Oro, not the god, but a chief of that name, is the cause. He was a small chief within Papara. His father’s name was Tiaau; you will remember my speaking of him in connection with the little chiefery of Amo, to which Adams and I have succeeded; and you may remember the story of the chief and of his paepae[25] there, all grown over now, and of the cocoanut that served as a watch-tower. It all comes into the story, if told in detail.

There were thus battles and wars within the Tevas, and there is another story of Papara and our ancestors into which a woman comes again, and not only one woman but another. I leave it as I first wrote it down, though it suggests in itself much alteration and explanation. I shall call it:

THE STORY OF TAURUA OR THE LOAN OF A WIFE

Tavi ruled in Taiarapu, known for his wild generosity, and for the beauty of his wife, Taurua Paroto. To him Tuiterai of Papara sent messengers, begging the loan of his wife for the space of seven days. There may have been hesitation on the chief’s part, but his habits of giving prevailed, and Taurua came to Papara, to spend her seven days with Tuiterai. At the end of that term she was not returned to her lord, who sent messengers for her.

But Tuiterai refused. “I will not give her up,” he said, “I, Tuiterai of the six skies, her who has become to me like an ura to my eyes, rich ura brought from Raratoa—my dear gem! I have treasured her now, and I treasure her yet, as the uras of Faaa; and I shall not give her up now. No, I shall not give her—why should I give her up—I, Tuiterai, of the six skies; for she has become precious beyond the uras of Raratoa?” Thus the song preserves his refusal; so Tavi made war upon him, and Tuiterai was defeated and made prisoner, and was upon the point of being put to death. But he pleaded with his captors who had bound him, claiming that he should be taken to Tavi, and, if killed, then killed by him a chief. So that they carried him away in a canoe, all tied up, that he could neither move nor see; and his bonds increased the faintness caused by his wounds. But he pressed his captors to hurry, for fear that he should die by his cords; and he knew how far he had gone, for his fingers, touching the waters, recognized the “feeling of each river, as every skilful swimmer knows.” At length he was brought before Tavi, and set before him, along with Taurua.

But Tavi said to his men, “Why did you not kill him when you had caught him? It is not meet that I, a chief, should put him, a chief, to death.” And addressing Tuiterai he said, “It is you that have bound me with cords that bind my heart and make the skies gloomy, as if you had drawn them down and bound them over me. You have taken one who lay in my arms, and tied a knot between her and me, and you have broken the ropes that tied us together—her and me. Take her!”

So Tuiterai won Taurua.

But dark fate seems to have pursued the generous man, and later Tavi was defeated in war and fled to the Pomotu Islands, where he disappeared.

The war again came from Taurua the beautiful: she had a son by Tavi, a son called Tavi Hauroa, and Teritua also, and names had been given him from other places, as Taurua came from Hitiaa. For this child Tavi put a taboo (rahui) on his land, and tried to extend it further on, wherever he might claim. But Taaroa Manahune had married Tetuae-huri, the daughter of Vehiatua, and was expecting the birth of Teu.[26] “Your wife should eat pigs,” was said to Taaroa; so they eat the pigs, resisting the claim of Tavi, who being at Pai crossed at Tehaupo, and was beaten by Vehiatua. A part of the defeated returned from the Pomotu, and were granted the holding of Afaiti, under the boy Tavi Hauroa. But in an evil moment, he flew his kite over the marae of Fareupua, so that it was caught in the aito (ironwood—casuarina) trees; and at the instigation of Tunau, the high-priest, he was put to death. How and why? By whom? Was his companion also killed?

There would seem to be a moral to this tale, which would run this way: that generosity is a doubtful quality, and that it is wiser to take another man’s wife than to let go your own.

Some explanations I should have woven into this story for you, but I write almost directly from Marau’s recitation, and it was only afterward that I got from her some more details.

In reality, the right of Tavi to place a general taboo or rahui on Taiarapu generally was a very questionable one. It might have been merely a question of pride that made him insist upon it when his claim was weak. It was also, it would seem, a general desire in the other members of the clan to weaken its power or limit its range.

By making a general rahui or taboo, as we call it, the chief had everything that grew, everything that was made, everything that was caught, set aside for a time, for some particular use: to make further feasts or for the food or the property of an heir, for instance. Hence its frequency after the birth of a young prince or princess. Or it might have been that some great feasts or generosities had depleted, if I may so call it, the treasury. Later even, some of the missionaries in Catholic Islands have found it useful to preserve the plants, and allow them to increase so as to prevent the recurrence of a famine.

Tavi had only undisputed claim over Tautira, Afaahiti, Hiri, and in Tai.

Vehiatua ruled over the southern and western parts of Taiarapu, as far as Teahupo and Vairoa.

The little Teu, who was born of Tetuae-huri, the daughter of the Vehiatua that defeated poor Tavi, became the big and important Teu founder and first of the Pomarés, called kings by the missionaries, who did much to establish them in that position, unknown to the mind and the customs of the Polynesians of the East Pacific. The son of Tavi, who came back from the Pomotus, and was received in royal style and given the district now called Afaahiti, was killed at the marae of Farepua of Vaiari, as I have just related.

Among the chiefs who helped Teu to his new position was Terii nui o Tahiti, who bears a very interesting name: The Great Chief of Tahiti. In this case the word Tahiti refers to a marae of Vaieri, not to the island. Besides Farepua, Vaieri had this marae of Tahiti, which very probably gave its name to the island at some remote period; and it must have been a Teva name.

The fortune of the Papara family seems to have come up at various times, and to have culminated at the time of Purea (our Oberea). Her pride and the pride of the Tevas brought about disaster long after she had passed from power. The woman began and the woman ended. She was married to Amo (of Cook), as we know (Teviahitua), and was herself the daughter of Vaetua, Chief of Faaa, the district between the Tevas and the Purionu; whence later were to come the Pomarés, enemies of the Tevas and of the house of Papara. Her real name was, as I have said before, Te Vahine Aviorohe i Ahurai. Her brother Teihohe i Ahurai had a daughter who married Vairatoa, whose daughter Marama was the mother of our old chiefess, and consequently the grandmother of our queen and princesses. In this way, then, Pomaré II, who became king, was the second cousin of this last Marama; and, as in Tahiti cousins are brothers and sisters, Pomaré called her sister.

Hence, again, the tendency between the last Pomarés and the old lady to make matters right again, and to join the families by marriage, as when Marau married the last Pomaré (V), or when Pomaré III wished our old chiefess to be queen, instead of the famous lady whom we know as Queen Pomaré, with whom our adopted chiefess was always most friendly and intimate.

And so at the time of the last century, Purea, or Oberea, had no superior, unless the head of the older Vaiari branch. Teriirere, the son of Amo and Purea, was a child when Wallis came, hence must have been born in the neighbourhood of 1760; and in his honour and for his advantage, a rahui or taboo was placed upon all the Tevas for the child. The might of the rahui was great; the power to impose it, as it confirmed rights and prestige, gave great umbrage, and there was a way of breaking it without war that could be resorted to. That was to have a chief or person of equal rank, or a relation of the same degree, come as a guest to the place where the rahui existed. According to custom the guest was entitled to receive as guest all that could be given, and that meant all the accumulations of the rahui. Terii Vaetua, Purea’s own mother, determined to break it, and came from their home in Faaa, in her double canoe, with the tent upon it indicative of royalty (fare-oa).

The canoe bearing her mother entered the sacred pass in the reef opposite the outu of Mataiatea. This pass was reserved for princes alone. Purea was living at that time opposite the pass, some little way (two miles) from Papara, and called out to the canoe as it entered:

“Who dares venture through our sacred pass? Know they not that the Tevas are under the sacred rahui for Teriirere i Tooarai? Not even the cocks may crow or the ocean storm.”

Her mother answered, “It is (I am) Terri Vaetua, Queen of Ahurai.”

“How many royal heads can there be?” said Purea. “I know no other than Teriirere. Down with your tent!”

In vain Vaetua wept and cut her head, according to custom, with a shark’s tooth, until the blood flowed. She was obliged to return without a reception from Purea. Then a grand-daughter of Terii Vaetua, a girl under twenty, a niece of Purea’s, made an attempt in the same direction. But the same cry came from Purea: “Down with your tent!”

Tetuanui (Reaiteatua) the girl, came ashore, sat down upon the beach, and in the same way cut her head until the blood flowed into the sand, according to the old custom, asking, if unredeemed, blood for blood. Manea,[27] the high-priest, her brother-in-law, then came upon the scene. He feared the danger of making enemies of the Auhrai princesses, and he said thus: “Hush, Purea! Whence is the saying, the pahus (drums) of Matairea call Tutunai for a maro ura for Teriirere i Tooarai. Where will they wear the maro ura? Maro ura—the red girdle of royalty and surpreme chiefhood. In Nuura i Ahurai. One end of the maro holds the Purionu, the other end the Tevas; the whole holds the Oropoa.”

(Words that I do not quite understand, as given by Marau, but which implied the danger of breaking up their union.)

“I recognize no head here but Teriirere,” answered Purea.

Then Manea, unable to do more than to clear himself, and make what amends were in his power, for the insult he could not prevent or turn away, wiped with a cloth the blood shed by Tetuanui, and took her to his house. When, forty years after, Tetuanui took her revenge in the massacre of the family of Papara, this action of Manea saved part of them; and through him we descend, in the male line, from the Tuiterai of the preceding generation. From Tetuanui, by her marriage with Varatao, the first Pomaré chief of the unfriendly Purionu, was born Pomaré II, the first king and he who became the chief enemy of the Tevas.

Marau, in relating all this story, on different occasions, felt, I believe, the old pride of Purea beat through her: her voice rose in repeating the words: “Down with your tent!” and “I know no other royal head than Teriirere.” I could almost believe that it was she who asserted herself in the person of her great ancestress.

But for all that, now before the final disaster, the house Papara seems to have met a great check again, in a display of the power and pride of Purea. She and Amo built for Teriirere a new marae on that same point where the ladies of Ahurai shed their blood in protest—Mahaiatea and Amo took its foundation stone (if I may so call it) from the original marae of Taputuoarai. Cook has described it as he saw it in 1764—the most important building of the kind he had seen. And over its remains I have scrambled, as you know, unawares of all that it had meant. How much better can I understand the resistance made by our old chiefess to letting it be used as a quarry for the buildings of the great plantation of Atimaono, the great sugar estate of the adventurer Stuart; now involved in a ruin like to that of the old temple. The chiefess, for this refusal, was removed from her position for a time; how reinstated I do not know. You know that I told you before, she is a chiefess, recognized by the French Government, as well as by inheritance, Tati acting for her. It was one of those outrages that the new generations perpetrate on the old; and in this case more disgraceful than usual. But few people sympathize with the “lachrymae rerum” that touched the pagan poet.

You must look up Cook’s description, which I have not by me. Everything in the way of books here is fragmentary, the public library usually unvisited, and many of its possessions scattered carelessly.

The completion of this monument coincided with the beginning of the war that drove Amo and Oberea away, and ruined Papara for a time; a war which occurred between Cook’s first and second voyages; so that he found his former friends reduced in power and dignity. The Vehiatua of that time, with Taiarapu and the Purionu, joined in the attack upon Papara thus breaking the Teva power from within.

There is a poem, difficult to render, which is associated with this completion of the marae, and which seems to bring the war from that. There has been much trouble to make a settled translation of it. The one which I add is a revised translation by Moetia, conferring with the others, whose translation in the rough I have kept separate. I give you Marau’s own copy.