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"My first wife died," continued the arii, contemplatively. "I divorced the second, and the third is just now eating the first déjeuner in that room. I have eight children, and will have twenty, and I am the chief of the Papenoo district, but this is not the place of my ancienne famille.
"They gave the people what they wanted, first a golden calf god, and then an ark, and they had charge of both." The chief frowned. He was a confirmed Bible reader, and the Old Testament was so much like the Tahitian legends that he believed every word of it. "The Arii," he said, "were sacred and had miraculous strength and powers. The food they touched was for others poison.
"The Manahune owned nothing by law, but they lived on the lands of Arii and Raatira, and were seldom evicted. They had the fruits of their labor with a tithe or so for their masters; they left to their children their accumulations, tentative, but actual, and their service was pleasant; more in the nature of gifts than rent.
Their punishment was immediate and terrible. But of all the invaders of Gaul, the most formidable were the Lygians, a distant people, who reigned over a wide domain on the frontiers of Poland and Silesia. In the Lygian nation, the Arii held the first rank by their numbers and fierceness. Their shields are black, their bodies are painted black.
The Manahune could not rise above his caste except by the rare nomination of the king, but they could become Teuteu Arii, or servants of an Arii, and might thus acquire immense importance. "Like the eunuchs at courts or the mistresses of the noble and rich," I remarked. The chief shrugged his shoulders. "The Manahune might become a priest or even join the society of the Arioi," he rejoined.
The Arii had many words solely for their own use, and tapu, or prohibited, to all others; they had a hundred privileges. The Raatira were probably the power broken by the Arii. The Raatira had conquered the Manahune, and were themselves bested by the Arii, the newest come." The chief sighed. He was like an old Irish storyteller recounting the departed glories of Erin.
Only religion, the taboos, held them in any restraint. If a queen bore a child by an unknown father, the child was as royal as if the descendant of a long line of kings; but if the father was notoriously a commoner, the child remained a prince, though not so high of rank as if his father had been an Arii.
There was a head in each Arii family to whom the others were subject; he was often an infant, and almost always a young man, for the eldest son of the chief was chief and the father only regent. This custom continued until comparatively recently in most families besides those of the Arii. The Arii were the descendants of the last conquerors of these islands.
I read to him in French Bovis' opinions that the Raatira, defeated, retained part of their lands, served the new masters, and kept in subjection the people they had themselves beaten. They attached themselves to the Arii of their district, fought for them in their quarrels or wars, and were consulted in assemblies, and allowed to speak to the crowd.
The sea was divided into properties, as was the land. The Arii had the reefs where the fish most abounded. "War was declared with religious ceremonies. Sacrifices were the basis of these ceremonies, and a human victim the most efficacious. The augurs examined the entrails, the auspices, much as did the pagans of old. Certain priests had certain duties.
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