OF THE SOUTH SEAS 395 



new feminism send heralds of contraception schemes on 

 lecture tours to instruct the proletariat, and brave women 

 to go to prison for giving the prescription. The well- 

 to-do have always been cognizant of it. 



The Tahitians have ever been adoring of little ones, 

 and if their annals are stained by the blood of innumer- 

 able innocents murdered at birth, let it be remembered 

 that it was a law, and not a choice of parents — a law in- 

 duced by the sternest demands of social economy. Re- 

 ligion or the domination of priests commanded it. They 

 obeyed, as Abraham did when he began to whet his knife 

 for his son Isaac. To-day in Europe conditions pre- 

 scribe conduct. Morality fades before race demands. 

 Polygamy or promiscuity looms a possibility, and may 

 yet have state and church sanction, as in Turkey. 



In Tahiti, from time immemorial, as native annals 

 went, there was a wondrous set of men and women called 

 Arioi who killed all their children, and whose ways and 

 pleasures recall the phallic worshipers of ancient Asian 

 days. Forgotten now, with accounts radically differ- 

 ing as to its composition, its aims, and even its morals, a 

 hundred romances and fables woven about its personnel, 

 and many curious hazards upon its beginnings and se- 

 cret purposes, the Arioi society constitutes a singular 

 mystery, still of intense interest to the student of the 

 cabalistic, though buried with these South Sea Greeks a 

 century ago. 



The Arioi, in its time of divertisement, was a lodge of 

 strolling players, musicians, poets, dancers, wrestlers, 

 pantomimists, and clowns, the merry men and women of 

 the Pacific tropics. They were the leaders in the wor- 



