OF THE SOUTH SEAS 61 



lingered for several hours. It was of fruit and coffee 

 and bread; papayas, bananas, oranges, pineapples, and 

 alligator-pears, which latter the French call avocats, the 

 Mexicans ahuacatl, and were brought here from the 

 West Indies. To this breakfast male guests dropped 

 in from the bath in pajamas, but the dejeuner a la 

 fourchette, or second breakfast at eleven, was more 

 formal, and of four courses, fish, bacon and eggs, curry 

 and rice, tongues and sounds, beefsteak and potatoes, 

 feis, roast beef or mutton, sucking pig, and cabbage or 

 sauer-kraut. For dessert there was sponge- or cocoa- 

 nut-cake. All business in Papeete opened at seven 

 o'clock and closed at eleven, to reopen from one until 

 five. Dinner at half -past six o'clock was a repetition 

 of the late breakfast except that a vegetable or cabbage 

 soup was also served. 



Two Chinese youths. To Sen and Hon Son, were the 

 regular waiters, but were supplemented by Atupu, 

 Iromea, Pepe, Akura, Tetua, Maru, and Juillet, all 

 Tahitian girls or young women who had a mixed status 

 of domestics, friends, kinfolk, visitors, and hetairae, the 

 latter largely in the sense of entertainers. I doubt if 

 they were paid more than a trifle, and they were from 

 the country districts or near-by islands, moths drawn by 

 the flame of the town to soar in its feverish heat, to singe 

 their wings, and to grow old before their time, or to 

 grasp the opportunity to satiate their thirst for foreign 

 luxuries by semi-permanent alliances with whites. 



Lovaina's girls! How their memory must survive 

 with the guests of the Tiare Hotel ! One read of them 

 in every book of travel encompassing Tahiti. One 

 heard of them from every man who had dropped upon 



