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Updated: June 23, 2025


The doctor contriving to make them understand the purely social object of our visit, they gave us a true Tahitian welcome; pointing into their dwellings, and saying they were ours as long as we chose to remain. We were struck by the appearance of these people, both men and women; so much more healthful than the inhabitants of the bays.

The choir was composed of twelve or fifteen ladies of the mission, occupying a long bench to the left of the pulpit. Almost the entire congregation joined in. The first air fairly startled me; it was the brave tune of Old Hundred, adapted to a Tahitian psalm. After the graceless scenes I had recently passed through, this circumstance, with all its accessories, moved me forcibly.

Many of these were cottages in modern style, but a dozen or so were the true Tahitian faré, of bamboo and thatch. All were covered with flowering vines, and surrounded by many fruiting trees. "Tautira nei!" announced my coachman. "Tautira is here!" He pulled up the horse. I had not given any thought to my lodging, and I jumped out and looked around.

It must be known that the missionaries of the good ship Duff, who more than half-a-century ago established the Tahitian reckoning, came hither by the way of the Cape of Good Hope; and by thus sailing to the eastward, lost one precious day of their lives all round, getting about that much in advance of Greenwich time.

Nearly sixty years have elapsed since the Tahitian mission was started; and, during this period, it has received the unceasing prayers and contributions of its friends abroad. Nor has any enterprise of the kind called forth more devotion on the part of those directly employed in it.

Men and women stood in line for the chance to redeem their fortunes, to slake their rage, to gain applause. Once they thought they had conquered the Tahitian. He began to lose, and before his streak of trouble ended, he had sent more than thirty packages from his hut to the grove. But this was the merest breath of misfortune; his star rose again, and the contents of the canoes were his.

These odors of the hinano and tiare were philters worthy of the beautiful Tahitian girls, with their sinuous, golden bodies so sensualized, so passionate, and so free.

Between them speeches of friendship were addressed to me by the chief and others, and I sorrowfully replied. Choti gave the key-note to our mutual regrets at my leaving by quoting the letter in Tahitian written by Ori-a-Ori to Rui at Honolulu long ago: I make you to know my great affection. At the hour when you left us, I was filled with tears; my wife, Rui Telime, also, and all of my household.

Nineteen able labourers are all the trader at Taiohae can muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in their veins runs the blood of English, American, Dane, German, French, Corsican, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Paumotan, Tahitian, and Easter Islander. There are more races than there are persons, but it is a wreckage of races at best.

Prince Hinoi, the fat spendthrift who might have been a king, leaned from the balcony of the club, glass in hand, and shouted, "Aroha i te revaraa!" across the deserted beach. So we left Papeite, the gay Tahitian capital, while a slashing downpour drowned the gay flamboyant blossoms, our masts and rigging creaking in the gale, and sea breaking white on the coral reef.

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