412 MYSTIC ISLES 



and hated the necessity of a near departure. Their 

 communism in work he praised daily, their singing at 

 their tasks, and their wearing of flowers. We had in 

 common admiration of those quahties and a fervor for 

 the sun. For his Greek I gave him. St. Francis's can- 

 ticle, which begins: 



Laudate sie, mi signore, cum tuote le tue creature, 

 Spetialmente messer lo frate sole. 



Praised be my Lord, with all his creatures, and especially our 

 brother the Sun, our sister the Moon, our brother the Wind, 

 our sister Water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble 

 and chaste and clean ; our brother Fire, our mother Earth, and 

 last of all for our sister Death. 



We remarked that while we plunged into the sea 

 bare, Tahitians never went completely nude, and they 

 were more modest in hiding their nakedness than any 

 white people we had ever met. They could not accede 

 to the custom of Americans and Englishmen of public 

 school education when bathing among males of strip- 

 ping to the buff and standing about without self -con- 

 sciousness. The chief had said that in former times 

 men retained their parens except when they went fish- 

 ing, at which time they wore a little red cap. He did 

 not know whether this was a ceremonial to propitiate 

 the god of fishes or to ward off evil spirits in scales. 

 Man originated on the seashore, and many of the most 

 primitive habits of humans, as well as their bodily dif- 

 ferences from the apes, came from their early life there. 

 Man pushed back from the salt water slowly. 



The official affairs of the fhefferie, beyond the repair 

 of roads and bridges, were few. Crime among Tahi- 

 tians being almost unknown, the chief's duties as magis- 



