OF THE SOUTH SEAS 413 



trate were negligible, and the family uttered many aues 

 when I related to them the conditions of our countries, 

 with murders, assaults, burglaries and rapine as daily 

 news. The French law required a civil ritual for mar- 

 riage, and Tetuanui tied the legal knots in his district. 

 I was at the fhefferie when a union was performed. 

 The bride and groom were of the middle class of pros- 

 perous landholders. They arrived in an automobile 

 wonderfully adorned with flowers, with great bouquets 

 of roses and ferns on the lamps. They were accom- 

 panied by cars and carriages filled with their families 

 and friends. The bride was in a white-lace dress from 

 Paris, with veil and orange-blossoms, and the groom in 

 a heai-y black frock-coat over white drill trousers with 

 lemon-colored, tight shoes; both looking very ill at ease 

 and hot. The father of the groom must have us to the 

 church and to the wedding feast, so Brooke and I rode 

 in a cart, I on the mother's lap, and the poet on the 

 knees of the father. The jollity of the arearea was al- 

 ready apparent, and the father vainly whipped his 

 horse to outspeed the automobile. All the vehicles 

 raced along the road and into the yard of the Protestant 

 church of Mataiea at top gait. 



It was the season of assemblage of the manu patia, the 

 wasps brought from abroad, and quite ten thousand were 

 clustered on the church ceiling, while thousands more 

 patrolled the air just over our heads, courting and quar- 

 reling, buzzing and alighting on our heads and necks. 

 The preacher in a knee-length Prince Albert of black 

 wool, opened so that I saw he had nothing but an under- 

 shirt beneath, recited the ceremony and addressed the 

 couple. He took a ring from his trousers-pocket, un- 



