44 MYSTIC ISLES 



rapidly in the spiritual atmosphere so murderous to 

 natural, non-immunized souls and bodies. 



Many streets and roads are shaded by spreading 

 mango-trees, a fruit brought in the sixties from Brazil, 

 and perfected in size and flavor here by the patient ef- 

 forts of French gardeners and priests. The trees along 

 the town ways are splendid, umbrageous masses of dark 

 foliage whose golden crops fall upon the roadways, and 

 which have been so chosen that though they are seasonal, 

 the round mango is succeeded b)^ the golden egg, and 

 that by a small purple sort, while the large, long variety 

 continues most of the year. Monseigneur Jaussen, the 

 Catholic bishop who wrote the accepted grammar and 

 dictionary of the Tahitian language, evolved a delicious, 

 large mango, with a long, thin stone very different from 

 the usual seed, which occupies most of the circumference 

 of this slightly acidulous, most luscious of tropical 

 fruits. Often the pave is a spatter of the fallen man- 

 gos, its slippery condition of no import to the bare- 

 footed Tahitian, but to the shod a cause of sudden, 

 strange gyrations and gestures, and of irreverence to- 

 ward the Deity. 



Scores of varieties of fruits and flowers, shade-trees, 

 and ornamental plants were brought to Tahiti by ship 

 commanders, missionaries, officials, and traders, in the 

 last hundred years, while many of the indigenous 

 gi'owths have been transplanted to other islands and 

 continents by those whose interests were in them. The 

 Mutiny of the Bounty, perhaps the most romantic in- 

 cident of these South Seas, was the result of an effort 

 to transport breadfruit-tree shoots from Tahiti to the 

 West Indies. It is a beautiful trait in humankind. 



