OF THE SOUTH SEAS 31 



lower half was in the ocean. They seemed the free- 

 waving banners of romance, whispering always of nude 

 peoples, of savage whites, of ruthless passion, of rum 

 and missionaries, cannibals and heathen altars, of the 

 fierce struggle of the artificial and the primitive. I 

 loved these palms, brothers of my soul, and for me they 

 have never lost their romantic significance. 



From the sea, the village of Papeete, the capital and 

 port, was all but hidden in the wood of many kinds of 

 trees that lies between the beach and the hills. Red and 

 gray roofs appeared among the mass of growing things 

 at almost the same height, for the capital rested on only 

 a narrow shelf of rising land, and the mountains de- 

 scended from the sky to the very water's-edge. 

 Greener than the Barbadoes, like malachite upon the 

 dazzhng Spanish Main, Tahiti gleamed as a promise of 

 Elysium. 



A lighthouse, tall minister of warning, lifted upon a 

 headland, and suddenly there was disclosed intimately 

 the brilliant, shimmering surf breaking on the tortuous 

 coral reef that banded the island a mile away. It was 

 like a circlet of quicksilver in the sun, a quivering, shin- 

 ing, waving wreath. Soon we heard the eternal dia- 

 pason of these shores, the constant and immortal music 

 of the breakers on the white stone barrier, a low, deep, 

 resonant note that lulls the soul to sleep by day as it does 

 the body by night. 



Guardian sound of the South Seas it is, the hushed, 

 echoic roar of a Jovian organ that chants of the dangers 

 of the sea without, and the peace of the lagoon within, 

 the reef. 



A stretch of houses showed — the warehouses and 



