CHAPTER XV 



A drive to Papenoo — The chief of Papenoo — A dinner and poker on the 

 beach — Incidents of the game — Breakfast the next morning — The chief 

 tells his story— The journey back— The leper child and her doll— The 

 AUianco /-VanfotVe— Bemis and his daughter — The band concert and the 

 fire — The prize-fight — My bowl of velvet. 



WE had another picnic; this time at Papenoo. 

 Polonsky owned thirty thousand acres of 

 land in the Great Valley of Papenoo, the 

 largest of all the valleys of Tahiti. He had bought it 

 from the Catholic mission, which, following the monas- 

 tic orders of the church in other countries for a thousand 

 years, had early adopted a policy of acquiring land. 

 But there were too few laborers in Tahiti now. Chris- 

 tianity had not worked the miracle of preserving them 

 from civilization. The priests were glad to sell their 

 extensive holdings at Papenoo, and the energetic Russo- 

 French count said that he would bring Slav families 

 from Europe to populate and develop it. He would 

 plant the vast acreage in cocoanut-trees, vanilla vines, 

 and sugar-cane, and build up a white conmiunity in the 

 South Seas. He had noble plans for a novel experi- 

 ment. 



We started from the Cercle Bougainville in the after- 

 noon in carriages pulled b}^ California bronchos. The 

 dour Llewellyn, the handsome Landers, the boastful 

 McHenry, Lying Bill, David, the young American 

 vanilla-shipper, Bemis, an American cocoanut-buyer, 

 the half-castes of the orchestra, and servants, filled three 



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