United States or Colombia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They procured wives for themselves among the natives of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called Pitcairn's Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. Pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many years before another vessel touched there.
This proved a surprise. Our Breton sailors and our Basque mountaineers were not less foreign to the Parisian drawing-room than was Aziyade or the little Rahahu. One claimed to have a knowledge of Brittany, or of the Pyrenees, because one had visited Dinard or Biarritz; while in reality neither Tahiti nor the Isle of Paques could have remained more completely unknown to us.
A resume of the operations of the German squadron in the Pacific brought forth mention of the destruction of the Zeile and the Valkyrie. However, Cappy's mind was not in Tahiti now, but off the Falkland Islands, for he was very much pro-Ally and devoted more thought to military and naval strategy than he did to the lumber and shipping business.
The way was thus providentially prepared for Davida, who laboured on alone for fifteen years, for Tiere was soon afterwards removed by death, till assistance was sent him from Raratonga, itself lying in darkness when he commenced his ministrations. He received, however, occasional visits from the missionaries at Tahiti.
You'll see what that kid thought of me." In the light from the open cabin window I read the letter, painfully written on cheap, blue-lined paper. "Greetings to you, McHenry, in Tahiti, from Your Dog. It is hard to live without you. It is long since I have seen you. It is hard. I go to join my father. I give myself to the mako. To you, McHenry, from Your Dog, greetings and farewell."
He proceeded to the South Seas, and, on leaving Tahiti, published the Polynesian idyl, originally called "Raharu," which was reprinted as "Le Mariage de Loti" , and which first introduced to the wider public an author of remarkable originality and charm. Loti now became extremely prolific, and in a succession of volumes chronicled old exotic memories or manipulated the journal of new travels.
A princess of the reigning house died; was transported to the neighbouring isle of Raiatea; fell there under the empire of a spirit who condemned her to climb coco-palms all day and bring him the nuts; was found after some time in this miserable servitude by a second spirit, one of her own house; and by him, upon her lamentations, reconveyed to Tahiti, where she found her body still waked, but already swollen with the approaches of corruption.
The islanders were delighted to behold foreigners coming to take up their permanent residence among them, as those they had heretofore seen had been transient visitors. "The inhabitants of Tahiti, having never seen any European females or children, were filled with amazement and delight when the wives and children of the missionaries landed.
She was an islander, but she had seen the Midnight Follies and the Bal Bullier, the carnival in Nice, and once, New Year's Eve in San Francisco. An Italian and a Scandinavian prince had wooed her. I spoke of Loti again, and of other writers' comments upon the attitude of women in Tahiti toward man. The princess sat up and adjusted her hei of ferns.
The iconoclast native teachers from Tahiti, in the early stage of the mission, when such stones were given up to them, had them taken off to the beach and broken into fragments, and so stamp out at once the heathenism with which they were associated. Hardly a single relic of the kind can be found at the present day. LE SA The sacred one.
Word Of The Day