OF THE SOUTH SEAS 379 



lake lies high in the mountains, at the very summit of 

 the valley of Mataiea, and overlooks the Great Valley 

 of Papenoo, owned by Count Polonsky, the cultivated 

 Slav-Frenchman. 



Tiura, the chief's oldest adopted son, arranged for 

 the journey, and led the four of us who made it. One 

 w^as an Australian, a doctor of the bush country of 

 Queensland, in his thirties, very tall, and strong, though 

 thin. He was a guest of the chief, and had walked en- 

 tirely aroimd Tahiti, barefooted, as had Mr. and Mrs. 

 Robert Louis Stevenson, to the consternation of the 

 conservative English residents of Tahiti, who wanted 

 them to live in Papeete and hold teas. Two pleasant 

 native youths went with us to carry our necessities. 



One cannot make the trip in the wet season, usually, 

 but we had had a period of quite dry weather, and were 

 nearing the end of the rainy period. The beginning of 

 the Valley of Vaihiria, the next to that of Mataiea, was 

 reached within an hour by the crooked road that leaves 

 the beach. The valley was very fertile, and its pic- 

 turesqueness a foretaste of the heights. The brook that 

 ran through it murmured that it, too, climbed to the 

 mountains, and would be our music on the way. The 

 ascent was difficult and wearisome. We walked 

 through long grass, over great rocks, and pulled our- 

 selves around huge trees. The birds, so rare near the 

 sea-shore, sang to us, and we saw many nests of fine 

 moss. The scenery was different from that of the Val- 

 ley of Fautaua, which I had climbed with Fragrance of 

 the Jasmine, more rugged, and less captivating, yet 

 beautiful and inspiring. The enormous blocks of basalt 

 often poised upon a point alarmed us, and Tiura said 



