406 MYSTIC ISLES 



cacy against the deep depravity and heathenism of his 

 black flock. The fact unknown to him was that the 

 missionaries in Polynesia preached and prayed, doctored 

 and taught, ten years before they made a single convert. 

 It was not until they bagged the king that a pawn was 

 taken by the whites from the adversaries' stubborn game. 

 The genius of these strugglers against an apparent im- 

 pregnable seat of wickedness was patience, "the passion 

 of great hearts." 



But conquering once politically, the missionaries 

 found their task all but too easy to suit militant Chris- 

 tians. As the converted drunkard and burglar at a 

 slum pentecost pour out their stories of weakness and 

 crime, so these Arioi, glorying in their being washed 

 white as snow, recited to hymning congregations con- 

 fessions that made the offenses of the Marquis de Sade 

 or Jack the Ripper fade into peccadilloes. 



Christian savs: 



Their Hevas or dramatic entertainments, pageants and 

 tableaus, of varying degrees of grossness, similar to the more 

 elaborate and polished products of the early Javanese and 

 Peruvian drama . . . one cannot help fancying must be all 

 pieces out of the same puzzle. ... I have with some pains 

 discovered the origin of the name "Arioi." It throws a lurid 

 light on the character of some of the Asiatic explorers who 

 must have visited this part of the Eastern Pacific prior to the 

 Europeans. In Maori the word Karioi means debauched, 

 profligate, good-for-nothing. In Raratonga [an island near 

 Tahiti] the adjective appears as Kariei. These are probably 

 slightly worn down forms of the Persian Khara-bati, which has 

 precisely the same significance as the foregoing. One is forced 

 to the conclusion that the Arabian Nights stories of the voy- 



