OF THE SOUTH SEAS 7 



in a climate where breadfruit and bananas grow? Or 

 the French, the governors of Tahiti? Were they, in 

 that isle so distant from Paris, their capital, practising 

 a Puritanism unknown at home? Was nature so fear- 

 ful? The figure of the barefooted man often arose as 

 I watched the Farallones disappear, the last of land we 

 would see until we arrived at Tahiti, nearly two weeks 

 later. 



The days fell away from the calendar ; they obliterated 

 themselves as quietly as our ship's wake to the north, as 

 we planed over the smooth waters toward the equator. 

 Gradually the passengers took on character, and out 

 of the first welter of contacts came those definite im- 

 pressions which are almost always right and which, 

 though we modify them or reverse them by acquaint- 

 ance, we return to finally. 



There was a Chinese, the strangest figure of an Asi- 

 atic, with a thin mustache, and wearing always a black 

 frock-coat and trousers, elastic gaiters, and a stiff, black 

 hat. His face was long and oval and the color of old 

 ivory. He had tried to gain admission to Australia 

 and New Zealand, and then the United States, and had 

 been excluded under some harsh laws. He was plainly 

 a scholar, but had brought with him from China a store 

 of curios, probably to enable him to earn money in the 

 land of the white. Australia had refused him; he had 

 been shut out of San Francisco, and the very steamship 

 that brought him was compelled to take him away. He 

 had failed to bring a necessary certificate, or something 

 of the sort, and the inexorable laws of three Christian 

 countries had sent him wandering, so that it was in- 

 evitable he must return to China by the route he had 



