CHAPTER IV 



The Tiare Hotel — Lovaina the hostess, the best-known woman in the South 

 Seas — Her strange manage — The Dummy — A one-sided tryst — An old- 

 fashioned cocktail — The Argentine training ship. 



THE Tiare Hotel was the center of English- 

 speaking life in Papeete. Almost all tourists 

 stayed there, and most of the white residents 

 other than the French took meals there. The usual 

 traveler spent most of his time in and about the hotel, 

 and from it made his trips to the country districts or to 

 other islands. Except for two small restaurants kept 

 by Europeans, the Tiare was the only eating-place in 

 the capital of Tahiti unless one counted a score of dis- 

 mal coffee-shops kept by Chinese, and frequented by 

 natives, sailors, and beach-combers. They were dark, 

 disagreeable recesses, with grimy tables and forbidding 

 utensils, in which wi'etchedly made coffee was served 

 with a roll for a few sous; one of them also offered 

 meats of a questionable kind. 



The Tiare Hotel was five minutes' walk from the 

 quay, at the junction of the rue de Rivoli and the rue 

 de Petit Pologne, close by Pont du Remparts. It was 

 a one- storied cottage, with broad verandas, half hidden 

 in a luxuriant garden at the point where two streets 

 come together at a little stone bridge crossing a brook — 

 a tiny bungalow built for a home, and stretched and 

 pieced out to make a guest-house. 



I was at home there after a few days as if I had 

 known no other dwelling. That is a distinctive and 



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