United States or Japan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In accordance with his custom, Bully, on this cruise, devoted a good deal of time to studying the soft-eyed Paumotuan vahine; and after filling his schooner with a fair amount of plunder, he did, it is stated, take away some ten or fourteen young Paumotu women not to Chili or Peru, but merely on an extended and indefinite pleasure trip.
The brig was now within the tropic of Capricorn, and not very far to the eastward of the Paumotu Archipelago, in which region night succeeds day with such astounding rapidity that the stars become visible within ten minutes of the sun's disappearance.
Whether they ever reached this place I cannot say. I know I never heard of the corbeta again, but did hear that the Santa Isidora was captured by the natives of the Paumotu Islands and all hands massacred. And then, too, his ardent and courageous spirit fretted greatly because of some news we had heard from the O'Caen, an armed American whaler, which on the 7th of August anchored near us.
It came upon the Papeete people like a tidal wave out of the sea, or like a cyclone that devastates a Paumotu atoll, but, entre nous, it had been brooding for months. Fish had been getting dearer and dearer for a long time, and householders had complained bitterly. They recalled the time when for a franc one could buy enough delicious fish for a family feast.
"If it were not for your presence in the country," says the President to the colored men, "we should have no war!" If it were not for silverware and jewelry, no burglaries would be committed! Don't let us get rid of the villains, but of the victims; thereby villainy will cease! Let Mr. Pomeroy be sent to annex some of the Paumotu or Tongan groups, where spontaneous bread-fruit would afford Mr.
After two or three years' successful trading in the northern islands of the Kingsmill Group, Flemming had sold out his trading interests very satisfactorily, and, always eager to go further afield, had sailed for the Paumotu Group, choosing Anaa as his home, for he thought he should like the people, and do very well as a trader, for the island was but a few days' sail from Tahiti in the Society Group, where there was always a good market for his produce, and where he could replenish his stock of trade goods from the great mercantile firm of Brander in those days the Whiteleys of the South and Eastern Pacific.
Now I wanted to cut off entirely from the main road, to sequester myself in a faraway spot, and to live as close to the native as was possible for me. My time was drawing near for departure. I must see all of the Etablissements Français de l'Oceanie, the blazing Paumotu atolls, and the savage Marquesas, and I must make the most of the several months yet remaining for me in Tahiti.
Then "George," a merry-faced, broad-chested native of Anaa, in the Paumotu Islands, after an inquiring glance at me, broke out into a bastard Samoan-Tokelauan canoe song, with a swinging chorus, altering and improvising as he sang, showing his white teeth, as every now and then he smiled at Yorke and myself when making some humorous play upon the words of the original song, praising the former for his skill and bravery, and his killing of the man-eating savages of New Hanover, his great strength and stature, and his kindly heart "a heart which groweth from his loins upwards to his throat."
"No," answered Barry hotly; "didn't I tell you that I used to write to her? I'm not one of that sort." "Beg pardon, sonny. I'm an old fool. But what was the mess?" "I left the Tawera like a blind fool at Tahiti, and sailed for the Paumotu Group on a pearl-shelling cruise in a cutter.
A magnificent bower a hundred feet long, broad and high, had been erected of bamboo and gigantic leaves. It was similar to a temple builded by the ardent worshipers of Dionysus to celebrate the vine-god's feast. The roof of green thatch was supported on a score of the slender pillars of the ohe, the golden bamboo, and there were neither sides nor doors. The pillars were wreathed with ferns and orchids from the forest near by, and on the sward between them were spread a series of yellow mats woven in the Paumotu atolls. They carpeted the green floor of the temple, and upon them, in the center, the graceful leaves of the cocoanut stretched to mark the division of the vis-
Word Of The Day