424 MYSTIC ISLES 



blood makes him a white man. The whites honor their 

 own pigment in all South America, but in the United 

 States count the negro blood as more important. In 

 Tahiti all were color-blind. 



The amuraa maa was over in a few hours. There 

 were no speeches, but much laughter, and much singing 

 of the himene written by the king, "E maururu a vau!" 



The tune was an old English hymn, but those were 

 all the words of the song, and they meant, "I am so 

 happy!" They were verses worthy of monarchy any- 

 where, and equaled the favorite of great political gath- 

 erings in America, "We're here because we're here!" 



"When I was made chief of Mataiea," said Tetuanui, 

 reminiscently to me as we sang, "I went, as was the 

 custom, to Papeete to drink with the king. He had 

 just fallen down a stairway while drunk, and injured 

 himself severely, so that our official drinking was lim- 

 ited. He hated stairs, anyhow, but his trouble was 

 that he mixed his drinks. That is suicidal. He would 

 empty into a very large punch-bowl champagne, beer, 

 absinthe, claret, whisky and any other boissons, and 

 drink the compound from a goblet. He could hold 

 gallons. He was dead in two weeks after I had my 

 chiefly toasts with him. His body was like an old cala- 

 bash in which you have kept liquor for a quarter of a 

 century. We had no alcohol until the whites brought 

 it." Tetuanui ended with a line of Brault's song about 

 Pomare : ''Puisqiiil est mort . . . N'en parlous plus!" 



Mataiea was the farthest point on Tahiti from Papeete 

 I had reached, and wishing to see more of the island, I 

 set out on foot with Tatini, my handmaid. We bade 

 good-bye to Tetuanui and Haamoura and all the family 



