20 MYSTIC ISLES 



pressed Europe of the last days of the eighteenth and 

 the first of the nineteenth centuries beyond the under- 

 standing by us cynical and more material people. The 

 world still had its vision of perfection. 



Tahiti was the living Utopia of More, the belle tie 

 of Rousseau, the Eden with no serpent or hurtful apple, 

 the garden of the Hesperides, in harmony with nature, 

 in freedom from the galling bonds of government and 

 church, of convention and clothing. The reports of 

 the English missionaries of the nakedness and ungodli- 

 ness of the Tahitians created intense interest and swelled 

 the chorus of applause for their utter difference from 

 the weary Europeans. Had there been ships to take 

 them, thousands would have fled to Tahiti to be relieved 

 of the chains and tedium of their existence, though they 

 could not know that Victorianism and machines were 

 to fetter and vulgarize them even more. 



Afterward, when sailors mutinied and abandoned 

 their ships or killed their officers to be able to remain in 

 Tahiti and its sister islands, there grew up in England 

 a literature of wanderers, runagates, and beach-comb- 

 ers, of darkish women who knew no reserve or modesty, 

 of treasure-trove, of wrecks and desperate deeds, piracy 

 and blackbirding, which made flame the imagination of 

 the youth of seventy years ago. Tahiti had ever been 

 pictured as a refuge from a world of suffering, from 

 cold, hunger, and the necessity of labor, and most of 

 all from the morals of pseudo-Christianity, and the 

 hypocrisies and buffets attending their constant secret 

 infringement. 



One morning when we were near the middle of our 

 voyage I went on deck to see the sun rise. We were 



