318 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



keeping company. This latter craft is navigated by his own 

 people, as he refuses to employ white sailors, having a rooted 

 dislike to the papalagi. 



On one~ occasion Tern Baiteke was offered a quantity of 

 Oregon timber, and the services of an English carpenter to 

 build him a handsome house. 



' No !' he replied. ' If I never have a house to live in, I 

 will never have a white man to live with me while he builds 

 it.' 



It was not always so in Apemama, and the rigid exclusion 

 which Tern baiteke maintains is due to a horrible story of 

 European avarice, lust, and murder, which would be a difficult 

 business to intelligibly relate here. 



The Line islanders all speak one language, in which con- 

 sonants are more freely used than in the Sawaiori languages of 

 the brown Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific. This is a 

 great advantage in employing them as labourers, as it is easier 

 to get on with them in their own tongue than in broken 

 English. 



Eighty per cent, of them are subject to a disease which 

 often incapacitates them from work from four to twelve 

 months. This is called in Fiji lhake, and in Samoa lepauni. 

 I have not heard that it exists in either the Marquesas or 

 Tahiti. It appears in the form of sores, which vary from the 

 size of a threepenny piece to 6 inches long. They are 

 generally circular or oval ; but when two or more join, the 

 sore assumes all sorts of shapes ; its edge is clearly defined, 

 raised, and filled with yellow matter. A week or two after its 

 first appearance the body is covered, and the patient becomes 

 very weak, and suffers much from rheumatic pains and stiff 

 joints. 



Sometimes the sufferers waste away and die ; but this may 



