OF THE SOUTH SEAS 803 



Governor three years ago to administer the district, 

 which needed a strong hand. I like it, and have bought 

 land and built this house. I will stay my days here. 

 There is the farehau, the administration building where 

 I meet the people and we have conferences." 



He pointed to a wooden cottage near by, with what 

 looked like a dancing-pavilion attached. There the 

 people come to squat upon the floor and relate their 

 grievances. Most of the disputes before minor and 

 major courts were over land and water rights. 



It was half past seven o'clock when we inspanned for 

 the trek to Papeete, a balmy, brilliant morning. The 

 banks and cliffs were masses of ferns, the living imposed 

 upon the dead, and hibiscus and gardenias and clumps 

 of bamboo in a dissolving pageant mingled with plots 

 of taro and yams, pineapples and bananas. The ma- 

 jestic bread trees and the spreading mangoes, the latter 

 with their fruit verging from gold to russet, were sur- 

 mounted by the soaring cocoanuts, the monarchs of the 

 tropics, whose banners fly from every atoll, and fall 

 only before the most terrible might of the King of 

 Storms. 



A cocoanut-palm bears at eight years and when about 

 twenty-five feet high. It rises seventy or eighty feet, 

 and has a hundred curves. It is the wily creature of the 

 winds, but outwits them in all but their worst moods. 

 To the tropical man the cocoa-palm is life and luxury. 

 He drinks the milk and eats the meat, or sells it dried 

 for making soaps and emollients and other things; the 

 oil he lights his house with and rubs upon his body to 

 assuage pain ; he builds his houses and wharves of it, and 

 thatches his home with the husks, which also serve for 



