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Noanoa Tiare took the orange-peel and rubbed it upon her hair. "Noanoa!" she said. "Mon ami américain, I will give you a note to Aruoehau a Moeroa, the tava, or chief of Mataiea district, and you can stay with him. You will know him as Tetuanui. He will gladly receive you, and he is wise in our history and our old customs. Do not expect too much!

The church of the curious Josephite religion was near by, and in the mission house attached to it I saw the American preachers of the sect. "What do they preach?" I asked Noanoa Tiare. "Those missionaries, the Tonito? Oh, they speak evil of the Mormons. I do not know how they speak of God." She laughed. "I am not interested in religions," she explained. "They are so difficult to understand.

I dived time and again, and then sat in the small glitter of sunlight to dry and to watch Noanoa Tiare make the basket. She said she had a wide choice there, as the leaves of the banana, cocoanut, bamboo, pandanus, or aihere would serve. She had selected the aihere, the common weed, and out of its leaves she deftly fashioned a basket a foot long and wide and deep.

You know our chiefs were always being secretly warned that England, which owns most of the islands in these seas, wanted to seize our island." Over the Diadem the dark shadows were lengthening. The daring pinnacles of Maiauo were thrust up like the mangled fingers of a black hand against the blue sky. Noanoa Tiare pointed to them. "The ahiahi comes. Night is not far off," she said warningly.

It was not hot like the summer heat of New York, for Tahiti has the most admirable climate I have found the world over, but at midday I had felt the warmth penetratingly. Noanoa Tiare made nothing of it, but suggested that we both leap into the tarn. I knew a moment of squeamishness, echo of the immorality of my catechism and my race conventions.

They are our song-birds. They are in these high valleys only, for the mina has frightened them from below the mina that came with the ugly Chinese." "Noanoa Tiare," said I, "you Tahitians are the birds of paradise of the human family. You have been driven from the rich valleys of your old life to hills of bare existence by the minas of commerce and politics.

"E, hitahita. Yes, we are hurrying back," the princess called vivaciously. "Those are our real men, not the Papeete dolts," she said. "If we had time, we would catch shrimp in the river. I love to do that." When we came to where the habitations began and the road became passable for vehicles, Noanoa Tiare sat down on a stone.

It was deliciously cold, and we drank it from leaf cups. "How about the time the French came here with the treasure?" I inquired. "Have we time for that history?" "Mais, oui!" said Noanoa Tiare. "That is too good for you not to know. You know that the French are excitable, n'est-ce pas?

Schlyter, the tailor, an occasional companion, was busied cutting and sewing a hundred uniforms for a war-ship's crew. I bethought me of the letter Princess Noanoa Tiare had given me to the chief of Mataiea, and with a bag I departed for that village at daybreak, after taofe tau for four sous at Shin Bung Lung's Fare Tamaaraa.

The sun was down, and the lagoon a purple lake when we were again at the bust of Bougainville. I thanked her at parting. "Noanoa Tiare," I said, "this day has a heavenly blue page in my record. It has made Tahiti a different island for me." "Maru, mon ami, you are sympathetic to my race. We shall be dear friends. I will send you the note to Tetuanui, the chief of Mataiea, to-morrow.