OF THE SOUTH SEAS 77 



dard, — all are meretricious, with their pomp of words 

 and no truth. I have comparisons to make with other 

 nations. I am more than sixty j'^ears a traveler, and I 

 am here seventeen years without cessation, in hell all the 

 time." 



"You Russians always like the French. How about 

 their achievements here?" I questioned, hoping to lift 

 his shade of melancholy. 



"The French?" he repeated. "They are brigands 

 and weak governors. They have been in Tahiti four 

 generations. Do you want to know how they got hold 

 here? A monarchy, a foolish Louis, sent a marine sa- 

 vant and soldier named Dumont D'Urville to the South 

 Seas with the casual orders : 



" 'D'apprivoiser les hommes, et de rendre les femmes 

 un peu plus sauvages;' to tame the men and make the 

 women a little more savage. The French did both, and 

 took all of this part of the world they could find un- 

 seized by Europe, and tamable, at not too great a shed- 

 ding of French blood. They said that it was their duty 

 to restore Temoana his kingdom in the Marquesas 

 Islands, eight hundred miles from here, northward. 

 Temoana had been a singer of psalms at the Protestant 

 mission in his valley of Tai-o-hae, in the island of Nuka- 

 hiva, a victim of shanghaiers, a cook on a whaler, a 

 tattooed man in English penny shows, a repatriate, a 

 protege of the Catholic archbishop of the Marquesans, 

 and finally, through the influence of the Roman church, 

 a king. He worked damned hard for the French flag 

 and the church, and the generous colonial bureau of 

 France paid his widow a pension of ten dollars a month 

 until she died of melancholy among the nuns. I knew 



