United States or Christmas Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I bade au revoir to my delightful companion, Edmond Brault, having determined to walk the remaining kilometers, and to send on my inconsiderable bag of clothing. Lovaina had given me a note to the chief of Papara, Tati, whose father was Salmon, an English Jew, and whose sister was Marao, the relict of the late king, and known as the queen.

Marao, the former queen, and her daughters, the Princesses Boots and Tekau, with a party of English acquaintances, were in front, and the general audience consisted of French and every caste of Tahitian, from half to a sixteenth. The men were in white evening suits, and the women and girls in décolleté gowns, white and colored.

The same, to a lesser degree, is true of the mountains. The Gerez and the Marão are only offshoots of the Cantabrian mountains, and the Serra da Estrella in Beira is but a continuation of the Sierra de Gata which separates Leon from Spanish Estremadura.

I met others of the royal family than the former queen, Marao, and her daughters, the Princesses Tekau and Boots, at an amuraa maa given at the mansion of Tetuanui. The preparations occupied several days, and we all assisted in the hunt for the oysters, shrimp, crabs, mao, and fish, going by twos and threes to the lagoon, the reef, the stream, and the hills for their rarest titbits.

The girls from the Cocoanut House, a flutter of brilliant scarlet and pink gowns, fled for shelter, tossing blossoms of the sweet tiati Tahiti toward their sailor lovers as they ran. Marao, the haughty queen, drove rapidly away in her old chaise, the Princess Boots leaning out to wave a slender hand.

Except the mountain range of the Marão which divides this province from the wilder and drier Tras-os-Montes, or the Gerez which separates the upper waters of the Cavado and of the Lima, and at the same time forms part of the northern frontier of Portugal, the hills are nowhere of great height.