OF THE SOUTH SEAS 279 



Philippines, although Japanese in the first two compete 

 with them. 



The main food of the Tahitians is feis, as is bread to 

 us, or rice to the Asiatic. It is not so in the Marquesas, 

 eight hundred miles north, where breadfinjit is the staff, 

 nor in Hawaii, where fermented taro (poi) is the chief 

 reliance of the kanaka. The feis, gigantic bananas of 

 coarse fiber, which must be cooked, are about a foot in 

 length, and three inches in diameter, and grow in im- 

 mense, heavy bunches in the mountains, so that obtain- 

 ing them is great labor. They are wild creatures of 

 heights, and love the spots most difficult of access. 

 Only barefooted men can reach them. These feis are a 

 separate species. The market-place is filled with them, 

 and hardly a Tahitian but buys his quota for the day. 

 The /(?i-gatherers are men of giant strength, naked save 

 for the pai'eu about the loins, and often their feet from 

 climbing and holding on to rocks and roots are curiously 

 deformed, the toes spread an inch apart, and sometimes 

 the big toe is opposed to the others, like a thumb. There 

 are besides many kinds of bananas here for eating raw; 

 some are as small as a man's finger, and as sweet as 

 honey. 



The fei-hunters hang six or seven bunches on a bam- 

 boo pole and bring them thus to market. One meets 

 these young Atlases moving along the roads, chaplets of 

 frangipani upon their curling hair, or perhaps a single 

 gardenia or tube-rose behind their ears, singing softly 

 and treading steadily, smiling, and all with a burden 

 that would stagger a white athlete. 



The taro looks like a war-club, several feet long, 



