OF THE SOUTH SEAS 37 



the level land as fertile as any on earth, and the suit- 

 able habitation of the most leisurely and magnificent 

 human animals of history. 



A thousand rills that drink from the clouds ever en- 

 circling the crags, and in which they are often lost from 

 view, leap from the heights, appearing as ribbons of 

 white on a clear day, and not seldom disappearing in 

 vapor as they fall sheer hundreds of feet, or thousands, 

 in successive drops. When heavy rains come, torrents 

 suddenly spring into being and dash madly down the 

 precipitous cliffs to swell the brooks and little rivers 

 and rush headlong to the sea. 



Tahiti has an unexcelled climate for the tropics, the 

 temperature for the year averaging seventy-seven de- 

 grees and varying from sixty-nine to eighty-four de- 

 grees. June, July, and August are the coolest and 

 driest months, and December to March the rainiest and 

 hottest. It is often humid, enervating, but the south- 

 east, the trade-wind, which blows regularly on the east 

 side of the islands, where are Papeete and most of the 

 settlements, purifies the atmosphere, and there are no 

 epidemics except when disease is brought directly from 

 the cities of America or Australasia. A delicious 

 breeze comes up every morning at nine o'clock and fans 

 the dweller in this real Arcadia until past four, when it 

 languishes and ceases in preparation for the vesper 

 drama of the sun's retirement from the stage of earth. 



Typhoons or cyclones are rare about Tahiti, but 

 squalls are frequent and tidal waves recurrent. The 

 rain falls more than a hundred days a year, but usually 

 so lightly that one thinks of it as liquid sunshine. In 

 the wet quarter from December until March there are 



