OF THE SOUTH SEAS 407 



ages of Sindbad the Sailor were founded on a bed-rock of solid 

 fact, and that Persian and Arab merchants, pirates and slave- 

 traders, must have penetrated into these far-off waters, and 

 brought their vile, effeminate luxury and shameful customs 

 with them from Asia, of which transplanted iniquity, the parent 

 soil half-forgotten, this word, like several others connected 

 with revelry and vice, like a text in scarlet lettering, survives 

 to this day. 



The first Jesuit missionaries to the Caroline Islands 

 found there an organization with privileges and some- 

 what the same objects as the Arioi, which was called 

 Uritoi. As "t" is a letter often omitted or altered in 

 these island tongues, it is not hard by leaving it out to 

 find a likeness in the names Arioi and Urioi. The Caro- 

 lines and Tahiti are thousands of miles apart, and not in- 

 habited by the same race. 



Ellis was a missionary incapable by education, ex- 

 perience, and temperament of appreciation of the ar- 

 tistic life of the Arioi. He would have chased the faun 

 into seclusion until he could clothe him in English trous- 

 ers, and would have rendered the Venus of JNIilo into 

 bits. Despite an honest love for mankind and consider- 

 able discernment, he saw nothing in the Arioi but a logi- 

 cal and diabolical condition of paganism. Artistry he 

 did not rank high, nor, to find a reason for the Arioi, did 

 he go back of Satan's ceaseless seeking whom he may 

 devour. 



Bovis, a Frenchman, world traveled, having seen per- 

 haps the frescos of Pompeii, and familiar with the his- 

 tories of old Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, and Rome, 

 knew that Sodom and Gomorrah had their replicas in all 



