OF THE SOUTH SEAS 97 



larger business houses had no signs to indicate the firms' 

 names or what they sold. Hardly any one knew the 

 names of the trees or the flowers or fishes or shells. 



A story once told, even facts thoroughly well known, 

 changed with each rei^etition. A month after an oc- 

 currence one might search in vain for the actuality. It 

 was more difficult to learn truthful details than any- 

 where I had been. The French are niggardly of pub- 

 lications concerning Tahiti. An almanac once a year 

 contained a few figures and facts of interest, but with no 

 newspapers within thousands of miles, every person 

 was his own journal, and prejudices and interest dic- 

 tated all oral records. 



McHenry hushed war reports to talk about Brown, 

 an American merchant who had left the club a moment 

 before, after a Bourbon straight alone at the bar. ]Mc- 

 Henry was a trader, mariner, adventurer, gambler, and 

 boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, and ob- 

 scene, he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of 

 women and men he had met, of lawless tricks on natives, 

 of storm and starvation, and of his claimed illicit loves. 

 Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-ej^ed, a chunk of 

 rank flesh shaped by a hundred sordid deeds, he must get 

 the center of attention by any hazard. 



"Brown's purty stuck up now," he said acridly. "I 

 remember the time when he did n't have a pot to cook in. 

 He had thirty Chile dollars a month wages. We come 

 on the beach the same day in the same ship. His shoes 

 were busted out, and he was crazy to get money for a 

 new girl he had. There was a Chink had eighteen tins 

 of vanilla-beans worth about two hundred American dol- 

 lars each. He got the Chink to believe he could handle 



