OF THE SOUTH SEAS 33 



The girls and women absorbed the attention of 

 passengers not of Tahiti. The New-Zealanders of the 

 crew called excitedly to various ones. Most of the men 

 passengers, tarr3dng only with the vessel, planned to 

 see a hula, and they wondered if any of those on the 

 wharf were the dancers. 



A white flower over the ear seemed a favorite adorn- 

 ment, some wearing it on one side and some on the 

 other. What struck one immediately was the erect car- 

 riage of the women. They were tall and as straight as 

 sunflower-stalks, walking with a swimming gait. They 

 were graceful even when old. Those dark women and 

 men seemed to fit in perfectly with the marvelous back- 

 ground of the cocoas, the bananas and the brilliant 

 foliage. The whites appeared sickly, uncouth, beside 

 the natives, and the white women, especially, faded and 

 artificial. 



The Noa-Noa was warped to the wharf, and I was 

 within a few feet now of the welcoming crowd and could 

 discern every detail. 



Those young women were well called les belles Ta- 

 hitiennes. Their skins were like pale-brown satin, but 

 exceeding all their other charms were their lustrous 

 eyes. They were very large, liquid, melting, and in- 

 describably feminine — feminine in a way lost to Occi- 

 dental women save only the Andalusians and the Nea- 

 politans. They were framed in the longest, blackest, 

 curly lashes, the lashes of dark Caucasian children. 

 They were the eyes of children of the sun, eyes that had 

 stirred disciplined seamen to desertion, eyes that had 

 burned ships, and created the mystery of the Bounty, 

 eyes of enchantresses of the days of Helen. 



