46 MYSTIC ISLES 



and preachers had sowed their seed here, as did Captain 

 Cook's men a century and a half ago, and the harvest 

 showed in numerous shadings of colors and variety of 

 mixtures. Tahiti had, since ship of Europe sighted 

 Orofena, been a pasture for the wild asses of the Wan- 

 derlust, a paradise into which they had brought their 

 snakes and left them to plague the natives. 



There were phonographs shrieking at one from a 

 score of verandas. The automobile had become a men- 

 ace to life and limb. There were two-score motor-cars 

 in Tahiti; but as the island is small, and most of them 

 were in the capital, one met them all the day, and might 

 have thought there were hundreds. Motor-buses, or 

 "rubberneck-wagons," ran about the city, carrying the 

 natives for a franc on a brief tour, and, for more, to 

 country districts where good cheer and dances sped the 

 night. A dozen five- and seven-passenger cars with 

 drivers were for hire. Most nights until eleven or later 

 the rented machines dashed about the narrow streets, 

 hooting and hissing, while their care-free occupants 

 played accordions or mouth-organs and sang songs of 

 love. Louis de Bougainville, once a French lawyer, 

 and afterward soldier, sailor, and discoverer and a lord 

 under Bonaparte, had a monument in a tiny green park 

 hard by the strand and the road that, beginning there, 

 bands the island. He is best known the world about 

 because his name is given to the "four-o'clock" shrub in 

 warm countries, as in Tahiti, which sends huge masses 

 of magenta or crimson blossoms climbing on trellises 

 and roofs. I walked to this monument from the Tiare 

 along the mossy bank of a little rivulet which ran to the 

 beach. It was early morning. The humble natives 



