876 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



A Native House on the Beach. 



THERE IS ALMOST A CONTINUOUS SETTLEMENT ALONG THE BEACH FRONT AROUND THE ENTIRE ISLAND, THE HOUSES 

 BEING ERECTED IN GROVES OF COCOANUTS, BREADFRUIT, MANGOES, ORANGES, BANYANS, AND BAMBOO. 



quent of pearls and divers, blackbirding 

 and piracy, typhoons, wrecks, and all 

 the adventures of beach and lagoon 

 that make up South Sea history. 



Yet so charming a scene hardly befits 

 such themes. Rainbow colored fish 

 play through the coral along the very 

 seawall at your feet, the placid green 

 lagoon meets a skyline of palms on 

 either hand, and seaward, beyond a 

 tiny palm-covered islet where a queen 

 once had her fortress, the surf rolls 

 creaming on the barrier reef from the 

 blue tropical ocean, rippling in the soft 

 fresh Trades. Behind the town, itself 

 hidden in verdure, green slopes rise 

 quickly to splintered volcanic peaks 

 nearly 8,000 feet high, carved by pre- 

 cipitous valleys with countless flashing 

 waterfalls. Melville wrote that the 

 ineffable repose and beauty of the 

 Tahitian landscape was such that every 

 object struck him like something seen 

 in a dream and he could scarcely believe 



such scenes had real existence. "Of- 

 ten," said Bougainville, "I thought I 

 was walking in the Garden of Eden." 



Papeete is the only town, but the 

 fertile level shores of the island are so 

 thickly populated as to form almost a 

 continuous village along the road that 

 skirts the beach for its circumference, 

 of nearly 100 miles. Yet there is prac- 

 tically no open land except in the unin- 

 habited mountains. Houses and vil- 

 lages are beneath endless groves of 

 cocoanuts, breadfruit, mangoes, oranges, 

 banyans and bamboo, with occasional 

 ornamental exotics from other tropical 

 lands. Alligator pears, native "chest- 

 nuts," mummy-apples and bananas, are 

 in almost every dooryard. Except for 

 two small sugar plantations, a few half- 

 hearted cotton patches, and small 

 clearings for taro, yams and other vege- 

 tables, there is no farming as we know 

 it. Copra and vanilla are the island 

 crops. 



