184 MYSTIC ISLES 



thread of them, but differentiating enough to cause the 

 hearer curiously mixed emotions. It was as if one heard 

 a familiar voice, and, advancing to grasp a friendly 

 hand, found oneself facing a stranger. 



None of these island peoples originally had any music 

 save monotones. In fact, in Hawaii, after the mission- 

 aries, Kaijpelmeister Berger, who came fifty years ago 

 from Germany to Honolulu, was largely the maker of 

 the songs we know now as distinctively Hawaiian. He 

 fitted German airs to Hawaiian words, composed music 

 on native themes, and spontaneously and by adaptation 

 he, with others, gave a trend to the music of Hawaii nei 

 that, though European in the main, is yet charmingly 

 expressive of the soft, sweet nature of the Hawaiians 

 and of the contrasts of their delightful gaiety and innate 

 melancholy. These native tongues of the South Seas, 

 with their many vowels and short words, seem to be made 

 for singing. 



The voyage from Tahiti to Moorea was a two-hours' 

 panorama of magnificence and anomalism in the archi- 

 tecture of nature. Facing my goal was Moorea, and 

 behind me Tahiti, scenes of contrary beauty as the vessel 

 changed the distance from me to them. Tahiti, as I 

 left it, was under the rays of the already high sun, a 

 shimmering beryl, blue and yellow hues in the overpow- 

 ering green mass, and from the loftiest crags floating a 

 long streamer-cloud, the cloud-banner of Tyndal. 



Moorea was the most astonishing sight upon the ocean 

 that my eyes had ever gazed on. It was as if a moun- 

 tain of black rock had been carved by the sons of Uranus, 

 the mighty Titans of old, into gigantic fortresses, which 

 the lightnings, temblors, and whirlwinds of the eons had 



