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He had run away for a change from the desert-like interior of his vast island, where he treated the ills of a large territory of sheep-herders, and to be on this mountain under such a benignant canopy, and to hear the folk-lore of the most fascinating race on earth, was to him worth foregoing sleep all night. Tiura assumed a serious pose for the divulgement of secret lore.

Jesus made the mountains the seat of his most important acts, and was there transfigured in glory. We had been pointed out by Tiura a great crack in the precipice, called Apoo Taria, the "Hole of the Ears." In the bloody struggles of the ancient tribes here the conquerors cut off the ears of their victims some say their captives and threw them in this hole.

The eel still has power over that spring." Tiura spoke in Tahitian and French, and I handed on his narrative. "The eel in Tahiti, from what I hear, has seen better days," commented the Queensland doctor. "All over the world the primitive people endowed this humble form of animal the serpentine with a cunning and supernatural power surpassing that of the four-footed creatures.

Fresh water did not agree with these miraculous architects whose material was their own skeletons. I went out toward the reef many mornings in a little canoe that Tiura, the eldest son of the chief, loaned me. I carried from the house a paddle and three harpoons of different sizes.

Except by the shore the natives warned us against swimming for fear of these monsters, but we were not disturbed. We looked into the dismal pit, Apo Taria, and tumbled rocks down it. "It has no bottom," said Tiura. "We have sounded it with our longest ropes."

Then she left, with the ipu in her hand, for Lake Vaihiria." Tiura halted his tale a minute to point out the constellation of the Scorpion, and to say, "Those stars are Pipiri Ma, the children, who lived at Mataiea long ago. That is a strange story of their leaving their parents' house for the sky!" "Aue!

"One day," went on Tiura, "the chief remarked to his vahine that he was starting up the mountain to see her grandparents. She wanted to go, too, but he said that he would just hurry along, and be back in a day or two. Against her will he went alone. He did come back in a day or two, and to her questions replied that he had had a delightful visit to her tupuna.

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.

When the tide was approaching high or when it began to ebb I had immortal experiences upon the reef. I went with Tiura or with the chief and a party, and found the waves dashing and foaming upon the natural mole, sweeping over it with the noise of thunder, crashing upon the sloping front, and riding their white steeds over the solid flagging to the lower lagoon.

"Because of those ears," said Tiura, "all the eels in this lake have very large ears, and it is so because the father of all the Mataiea folk was an eel. We shall see the eels to-morrow, but I must tell you of the chief of the district of Arue, near Papeete, about which M. Tourjee, the American, wrote the himene.