342 MYSTIC ISLES 



ripe cocoanuts, grated and pressed, made a delicious 

 substitute for cream. Over the breakfast we talked, 

 Tetuanui and Haamoura answering my questions and 

 taking me along the path of my inquiry into far fields of 

 former customs and ancient lore. They were, as their 

 forefathers, gifted in oral tradition, with retentive mem- 

 ories for their own past and for the facts and legends of 

 the racial histoiy. We who have for thousands of years 

 put in writing our records cannot grasp the fullness of 

 the system by which the old Polynesian chiefs and 

 priests, totally without letters, or even ideographs, ex- 

 cept in Easter Island, kept the archives of the tribe and 

 nation by frequent repetition of memorized annals. So 

 we got Homer's Odyssey, and the Song of Solomon. 



What Tahiti was like before the white ? That was to 

 me a subject of intense interest, now that I was fully 

 aware of the situation after a hundred and fifty years 

 of exploitation, seventy-five years of French domina- 

 tion, and thirty years of colonialism. The nature of the 

 people was little changed. The Tahitian was still naif, 

 hospitable, gentle, indolent except as to needs, valuing 

 friendship above all things, accepting the evangelism of 

 many warring Christian sects as a tumult among jealous 

 gods and priests, and counting sex manifestations free 

 expressions of affection, and of an appetite not more 

 sacred nor more shameful than hunger or thirst. 



These were the qualities and rules of conduct ascribed 

 to the Tahitians by the first discoverers, especially by 

 those who were not narrowed in judgment by inexperi- 

 ence and religious fanaticism, as were the British and 

 French missionaries of early days, peasants and appren- 

 tices who had forsaken the fields and workshops for the 



