418 MYSTIC ISLES 



when the index was neatly cleaned between his lips. 

 Custom was to lave the finger in the fresh-water shell 

 before resuming relations with the poi. 



My handsome neighbor ate four times as much as I, 

 and I was hungry. His appetite was not unusual 

 among these South Sea giants. I noticed that he ate 

 more than three pounds of pig and a quart of poi after 

 all his previous devastation of shellfish, feis, chicken, 

 and taro, besides two fish as big as both my hands. My 

 right-hand neighbor was Mr. Davey, an urbane and un- 

 reserved American, who informed me in a breath that 

 he was a dentist, a graduate of Harvard University, 

 seventy-two years old, and had been in Tahiti forty-two 

 years. He called his granddaughter of eighteen to meet 

 me, and she brought her infant. Only he of his tribe 

 could speak English, but she talked gaily in French. 



He practised his profession, he said, but with some 

 difficulty, as the eminent Acting- Consul Williams had 

 by law a monopoly of dentistry in the French possessions 

 in the South Seas. The monopoly had been certified to 

 by the courts after a controversy between them, but his 

 Honor Willi did not enforce the prohibition except as 

 to Papeete, and besides was very rich, and had more 

 patients than he could possibly attend. 



At the lower end of the mats the bachelors sat, — 

 there were only three whites at the feast, — and merri- 

 ment had its home there. After the first onslaught, 

 the vintages of Bordeaux and of the Rhineland, and 

 the brews of Munich and Milwaukee shared attention 

 with the viands. The head of the mats had a sedate 

 atmosphere, because of the several preachers there, and 

 those Tahitians ambitious to shine in a diaconal way 



