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The group was extraordinarily interesting, for besides the prince's heir and his sister, Chief Tetuanui, and his brother-in-law Charlie Ling, was Paraita, son of a German schooner captain, who was adopted by Pomaré V, and Tinau, another adopted son of the late king, who owned, and ran for hire, a motor-car.
"We were divided into three distinct castes," said Tetuanui. "The Arii, or princes; Raatira, or small chiefs and simple landed proprietors; and the Manahune, or proletariat. Alliances between Arii and Raatira made an intermediate class Eietoai.
This pyramid made part of one side of a wide court or square, the sides of which were nearly equal; the whole was walled in, and paved with flat stones. When we reached the thirty-ninth kilometer-stone we met my host, Tetuanui, in his one-horse vehicle, inspecting the road.
Mataiea and the tribe of Tetuanui had won my affections, but at Tautira I had become a Tahitian. I had lived in every way as if bred in the island, and had fallen so in love with the people and the mode of life, the peace and simplicity of the place, that only the already formed resolution to visit all the seas about stirred me to depart.
On rainy days, when Chief Tetuanui did not oversee the making or repair of roads in his district, and always when we were both at leisure, I sat with him, and the elders of the neighborhood, and queried them, or repeated for correction and comment my notes upon their antiquities notes founded on reading and my observation.
Crime among Tahitians being almost unknown, the chief's duties as magistrate were negligible, and the family uttered many aues when I related to them the conditions of our countries, with murders, assaults, burglaries and rapine as daily news. The French law required a civil ritual for marriage, and Tetuanui tied the legal knots in his district. I was at the çhefferie when a union was performed.
Tetuanui, rising to prepare the déjeuner, and I for a swim in the lagoon, "and if adopted, they go from one home to the other as they will. Parents are not as willing as before to let go their children; for whereas my grandmother had fifteen, I have none, and few of us have many. We are made sterile by your civilization.
It was not nearly of the original height, hardly a third of it, and was covered with twisted and gnarled toa, or ironwood, trees like banians, the etoa of Cook, and by very tall and broad pandanus, by masses of lantana and other flowering growths. Tetuanui, Brooke, and I stumbled through these, and walked about the uneven top, once the floor of the temple.
Ariioehau Amerocarao, commonly known as Tetuanui Tavana, or Monsieur le Chef de Mataiea, Tetuanui, and his wife, Haamoura, were the salt of the earth. The chief was a large man, molded on a great frame, and very corpulent, as are most Polynesians of more than thirty years. He was about sixty, strong and sweet by nature, brave and simple.
I sent with her my love to the Tetuanui clan, and some delicacies from the Maison des Varos for the half-blind Haamoura. The diligence did not run farther than Taravao, and the next day, with my impedimenta in the cart, and with a boy to drive it, I turned my back on the road to Papeete, and began the jog trot to the famous, but hardly ever visited, district of Tautira.
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