114 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



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House of Vae Kahn, Chieftess of the Marquesas at Tae-o-hoe. 



old Tahiti was to wither in a lingering decline. Fair as Tahiti was and 

 Paradise as the French regarded it, they were the first to curse it with 

 that infliction which "civilization" has for centuries brought upon 

 the "savage." Sad Tahiti, land of mountain mist, and murmuring 

 stream, of coral reef and tropic palm, and smiling skies was to be hence- 

 forth a pest-house for the simple race that knew her for their home. 

 From a native point of view the situation is well described in the 

 "Memoirs of Ariitaimai" of the great Papara family of Tahiti; who 

 says: 



For forty generations these people (the Polynesians) had been isolated in 

 this ocean, as though they were in a modern sanatorium, protected from con- 

 tact with new forms of disease, and living on vegetables and fish. The viru- 

 lent diseases which had been developed among the struggling masses of Asia 

 and Europe found a rich field for destruction when they were brought to the 

 South Seas. 



For this perhaps the foreigners were not wholly responsible, although their 

 civilization certainly was; but for the political misery the foreigner was 

 wholly to blame, and for the social and moral degradation he was the active 

 cause. No doubt the ancient society of Tahiti had plenty of vices, and was a 

 sort of Paris in its refinedness of wickedness; but these had not prevented the 

 islanders from leading as happy lives as had ever been known among men. 

 They were like children in their morality and their thoughtlessness, but they 

 flourished and multiplied. The European came and not only upset all their 

 moral ideas, but also their whole political system. 



P)ut to return to our narrative. Captain James Cook, upon the 

 first of his famous vovages visited Tahiti in the man-of-war Endeavour, 



