40 MYSTIC ISLES 



residences. French are some of these merchants, but 

 most are Australasian, German, American and Chinese. 

 France is ten thousand miles away, and the French un- 

 equal in the struggle for gain. Some of the stores oc- 

 cupy blocks, and in them one will find a limited assort- 

 ment of tobacco, anchors, needles, music-boxes, candles, 

 bicycles, rum, novels, and silks or calicos. Here in this 

 spot was the first settlement of the preachers of the 

 gospel, of the conquering forces of France, and of the 

 roaring blades who brought the culture of the world to 

 a powerful and spellbound people. Here swarmed the 

 crews of fifty whalers in the days when "There she 

 blows!" was heard from crows'-nests all over the broad 

 Pacific. These rough adventurers, fighters, revelers, 

 passionate bachelors, stamped Tahiti with its first 

 strong imprint of the white man's modes and vices, con- 

 tending with the missionaries for supremacy of ideal. 

 They brought gin and a new lecherousness and deadly 

 ills and novel superstitions, and found a people ready 

 for their wares. An old American woman has told me 

 she has seen a thousand whalemen at one time ashore off 

 ships in the harbor make night and day a Saturnalia of 

 Occidental pleasure, a hundred fights in twenty-four 

 hours. 



As more of Europe and America came and brought 

 lumber to build houses, or used the hard woods of the 

 mountains, the settlement pushed back from the beach. 

 Trails that later widened into streets were cut through 

 the brush to reach these homes of whites, and the 

 thatched huts of the aborigines were replaced by the 

 ugly, but more convenient, cottages of the new-comers. 



