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The bride, who is a few years older than the prince, is being educated at the court of Queen Pomare, and instructed in the Christian religion, and the English and Tahitian languages. The arrangements of the queen's residence are exceedingly simple.
After a repast, it being already late, we built a house to sleep in away from the dews of the heights, and Tiura recalled that the first Pomaré took his name from a time when he had spent the night here and coughed from the exposure.
It was the only book that in my early childhood I had an affection for, and I constantly turned its pages with eager pleasure. In the front of it there was an engraving of a very pretty dark woman who, crowned with reeds, was sitting gracefully under a palm tree. Under this picture was printed: "Portrait of her Majesty, Pomare IV., Queen of Tahiti."
But two remained, and kept at their preaching, and finally the genius of the Clapham clerics triumphed. Pomaré ate the tabu turtle of the temple, and a Christian nucleus was formed, headed by the sovereign. For years a bloody warfare over Christianity distracted the islands, comparable in intensity of feeling to that between Catholics and Huguenots in France.
We toasted Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and then we sang for an hour. M. Brault was the leading composer of Tahiti. He was the creator of Tahitian melodies, as Kappelmeister Berger was of Hawaiian. For our delectation Brault sang ten of his songs between toasts. I liked best "Le Bon Roi Pomare," the words of one of the many stanzas being: Il était un excellent roi Dont on ne dit rien dans l'histoire, Qui ne connaissait qu'une Loi: Celle de chanter, rire, et boire. Fervent disciple de Bacchus Il glorifiait sa puissance, Puis, sacrifiait
They had brought most of these to manhood and womanhood, and many were married. Perhaps their care, dots for the daughters, and estates for the sons, had made the parents poor. One was the blood son of Prince Hinoe, and was now a youth, and worked about the plantation of the chief. His christened name was Ariipaea Temanutuanuu Teariitinorua Tetuanui a Oropaa Pomare.
He had acquired the arts of reading and writing his own language, and had learned the first principles of Christianity. "The seed had not, as was supposed, been sown on stony ground, though it took long in growing up. Adversity caused Pomare to think.
Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certain damning bills which fall into Caroline's hands.
When the account of this melancholy affair reached our beach, everyone flew to arms, even all the women, for the young man was a general favourite. The war-cry spread in every direction. "Here," they exclaimed, "is the last of the Pomare family killed treacherously, a warrior related to and connected with every chief of consequence in the country, and a nephew of the great Shulitea."
In the lagoon, a thousand yards from me, was Motu Uta, a tiny island ringed with golden sand, a mass of green trees half disclosing a gray house. Motu Uta was a gem incomparable in its beauty and its setting. It had been the place of revels of old kings and chiefs, and Pomaré the Fourth had made it his residence.
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