OF THE SOUTH SEAS 209 



in their thoughts a part of Canton and the farms of 

 Quan-tung. All the bareness, dirt, and squalid atmos- 

 phere of home they had sought to bring to the South 

 Seas. They saw the other nationals here as objects of 

 ridicule and spoilage. The amassing of a competence 

 before old age or against a return to China, and the 

 marrying there, or the resumption of marital relations 

 with the wife he had left to make his fortune, was the 

 fiercely sought goal of each. 



Loti wrote nearly fifty years ago, a decade after their 

 influx: 



"The Chinese merchants of Papeete were objects of disgust 

 and horror to the natives. There was no greater shame than 

 for a young woman to be convicted of listening to the gallan- 

 tries of one of them. But the Chinese were wicked and rich, 

 and it was notorious that several of them, by means of presents 

 and money, had obtained clandestine favors which made amends 

 to them for public scorn." 



Had Admiral Julien Viaud returned now to Tahiti, 

 he would have found the Chinese stores thronged by the 

 handsomest girls, their restaurants thriving on their 

 charms, and the Chinese the possessors of the pick of 

 the lower and middle classes of young women. Ah Sin 

 is persistent ; he has no sense of Christian shame, and as 

 in the Philippines, he dresses his women gaily, and wins 

 their favors despite his evil reputation, his ugliness, and 

 his being despised. 



At the Cercle Bougainville I saw more than one 

 Chinese playing cards and drinking. These were 

 Chinese who had made money, and who in the give and 

 take of business have pushed themselves into the club 

 of the other merchants, who feared and watched them. 



