OF THE SOUTH SEAS 225 



serve. She had selected the aihere, the common weed, 

 and out of its leaves she deftly fashioned a basket a foot 

 long and wide and deep. 



Although she had been in Paris and London and in 

 New York, knew how to play Beethoven and Grieg and 

 Saint- Saens, had had gowns made by Paquin, and her 

 portrait in the salon, she was at home in this glade as a 

 Tahitian girl a hundred years ago. The airs of the ave- 

 nue de rOpera in Paris, and, too, of the rue de Rivoli in 

 Papeete, were rarefied in this simple spot to the im- 

 pulses and experiences of her childhood in the groves 

 and on the beaches of her beloved island. 



When I had on my coat, we gathered limes, bananas, 

 oranges, and a wild pineapple that grew near by in a 

 tangle of coffee and vanilla, and the graceful acalypha. 

 The yellow tecoma, a choice exotic in America, shed its 

 seeds upon the sow thistle, a salad, and the ape or wild 

 taro. The great leaves of the ape are hke our elephant's 

 ear plant, and the roots, as big as war-clubs, are tubers 

 that take the place of potatoes here. In Hawaii, 

 crushed and fermented, and called poi, they were ever 

 the main food. The juice of the leaf stings one's skin. 



The princess removed her shoes and stockings, and I 

 carried them over my shoulder. We deflected from 

 the rivulet to the chif above it, and there forced our way 

 along the mountain-side, feeling almost by instinct the 

 trail hidden by the mass of creepers and plants. 



It was a real jungle. Man had once dwelt there 

 when his numbers in this island were many times greater. 

 Then every foot of ground from the precipices to the 

 sea was cleared for the breadfruit, the taro, the cocoa- 

 nut, and other life-giving growths, which sowed them- 



