OF THE SOUTH SEAS 439 



than ours, which admits hells, prisons, asylums, poor 

 houses, bagnios, famines and wars, and fails even in the 

 recurrent j)eriods of hard times to provide for those 

 stricken by their lash. 



"But," said Lermontoff, "the Innuit, too, is corrupt- 

 ing under the influence of trade, of alcohol, and the 

 savage lust of the white adventurer. He attained 

 through many centuries, perhaps thousands of years, of 

 separation from other peoples, and without any of the 

 softening teachings of Christianity, a Jesus-like code 

 and practice, which the custodians of Christianity have 

 utterly failed to impress on the millions of their normal 

 adherents." 



I looked out upon the reef where the waves gleamed 

 faintly, upon the scintillating nearer waters of the la- 

 goon, and upon us, barefooted, and clothed but for de- 

 cency, and I had to jolt my brain to do justice to the 

 furred and booted Eskimo in his igloo of ice. The dif- 

 ference in surroundings was so opposite that I could 

 barely picture his atmosphere climatological and moral. 

 I led the conversation back to their situation in Vaieri. 



He had planted his vanilla-vines on coffee-bushes, the 

 vanilla being an orchid, a parasite, that creeps over the 

 upstanding plants, coffee, or the vermillion-tree. Ler- 

 montoff said that it was a precarious crop, a world lux- 

 ury, the price of which fluctuated alarmingly. Yet it 

 was the most profitable in Tahiti, which produced half 

 of all the vanilla-beans in the world. 



This man and woman made a deep impression upon 

 me. They had seen cities everywhere, had had position 

 and fashion, and were, for their advanced kind, at peace. 



"We have no nerves here," said Mrs. Lermontoff. 



