OF THE SOUTH SEAS 343 



higher sphere of devoteeism and freedom from manual 

 labor. These clerics, though often self-sacrificing and 

 yearning for martyrdom, attributed all differences from 

 their standards or preachments to inherent wickedness 

 or diabolism. 



One of the ablest of them had regretted sorrowfully 

 his having to inform the Tahitians that all their an- 

 cestors were in hell. Some clerics had made wearing 

 bonnets the test of decency, and all had taught that God 

 hated any open ardor of attraction for the opposite sex. 

 Yet it was almost entirely to them that the far-away 

 student had to turn to learn any of the details of native 

 life undefiled. The mariners had stayed too brief a 

 time to enter into these, and could not speak Tahitian. 



I knew that Tahitian life, political and economic, so- 

 cial and religious, had been utterly changed, but I 

 longed for an understanding of what had been; a pan- 

 orama of it before my eyes. I set out to obtain this by 

 constant interrogations of every one I thought might 

 have even a scrap of enlightenment for me. 



On rainy days, when Chief Tetuanui did not oversee 

 the making or repair of roads in his district, and always 

 when we were both at leisure, I sat with him, and the 

 elders of the neighborhood, and queried them, or re- 

 peated for correction and comment my notes upon their 

 antiquities — notes founded on reading and my obser- 

 vation. 



Whence had come these Polynesians or Maoris who 

 peopled the ocean islands from Hawaii to New Zealand, 

 and from Easter Island to the eastern Fijis? A race 

 set apart by its isolation for thousands of years from all 

 the rest of the world, distinguished in all its habitats — 



