OF THE SOUTH SEAS 469 



The Tahitian youth addressed the Greek god as 

 T'yonni, which was an effort to say John, and I adopted 

 it instanter, as he did my own Maru. T'yonni said that 

 Uritaata was the bane of his existence at Tautira. 

 After building his fare he had been called to America, 

 and had danced in Chinatown the night before his 

 steamship departed for his return to Papeete. He re- 

 membered obscurely drinking grappo with a deep-sea 

 sailor, and had awakened in his berth, the vessel already 

 at sea, and Uritaata asleep at his feet. Many Tahitians, 

 he said, had never seen such a fabulous brute, and 

 T'yonni had stirred in them a mood of dissatisfaction by 

 telhng that their forefathers had descended from sim- 

 ilar beings. 



"How about Atamu and Eva?" they had asked the 

 pastors. 



Those conservatists had replied emphatically that 

 Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, were created 

 by God, which agreed thoroughly with the Tahitian 

 legends, and after that T'yonni's generosity was ranked 

 higher than his knowledge. He laughed over the stories 

 as we sat at breakfast with my coachman in the kitchen. 

 T'yonni said that the deacon of the Protestant church 

 expressed a behef that the Paumotuans or even the 

 French might have followed the Darwinian course of 

 descent, but that Tahitians could not swallow a doc- 

 trine that linked them in relationship with Uritaata. 

 The Tongans, Polynesians like themselves, had a tradi- 

 tion that God made the Tongan first, then the pig, and 

 lastly the white man. 



"He quoted the Tongan with compassion for me," 

 said T'yonni. "And now about a place where you can 



