CHAPTER XIX 



The Arioi, minstrels of the tropics — Lovaina tells of the infanticide — 

 Theories of depopulation — Methods of the Arioi — Destroyed by mis- 

 sionaries. 



LOVAINA came out to Mataiea with the news 

 and gossip of the capital. A wretched tragedy 

 had shocked the community. Pepe, the woman 

 of Tuatini, had buried her new-born infant ahve in the 

 garden of the house opposite the Tiare Hotel. Lovaina 

 was full of the horror of it, but with a just appreciation 

 of the crime as a happening worth telling. The chef- 

 ferie was filled with aues. 



"Aue!" cried Haamoura, the chief's wife. 



"AueT said the chief, and Rupert Brooke, with whom 

 I had been swimming. 



"Aue!" exclaimed O'Laughlin Considine, the Irish 

 poet of New Zealand, stout, bearded, crowned with a 

 chaplet of sweet gardenias, and quoting verses in Maori, 

 Gaelic, and English. 



There were laments in Tahitian by all about, sorrow 

 that the mother had so little loved her babe, that she had 

 not brought it to Mataiea, where Tetuanui and 

 Haamoura or any of us would have adopted it. And 

 Lovaina said, in English for Considine, whom she had 

 brought to Mataiea, and for Brooke : 



"She had five children by that Tuatini. He is cus- 

 tom-officer at Makatea, phosphate island, near T'ytee. 

 He been gone one year, an' she get very fat, but she don' 

 say one thing. Then she get letter speakin' he come 



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