488 MYSTIC ISLES 



they implored them under pain of eternal punishment 

 to adopt. Imagine the fate of strangers who settled in 

 New England or Spain a hundred and twenty years ago 

 and who announced daily year in and year out that all 

 the ancestors of the people there were in hell, that their 

 God and their angels, saints, priests, and images were 

 demons, or doing the work of demons, and that only by 

 acknowledging their belief in a deity unheard-of before, 

 by having water sprinkled on their heads, and ceasing 

 the customs and thoughts taught as most moral and di- 

 vine by their own revered priests, could they escape 

 eternal misery as a consequence of a mistake made by a 

 man and a woman named Atamu and Ivi six thousand 

 years earlier! In Spain at that date the king whose 

 name had been coupled with Christ's on the cross near 

 my house at Tautira was expelling the Jesuits from his 

 kingdom, and the Holy Office recorded its thirtieth 

 thousand human being burned at the stake in that coun- 

 try in the name of Jesus Christ. 



The incredulous Tahitians tolerated the queer white 

 men who wore long, black coats and who had learned 

 their language, and who, except as to religion, spoke 

 gently to them, healed their wounds, patted their 

 children on the head, and taught them how to use iron 

 and wood in unknown fashions. They saw that these 

 men drank intoxicants in great moderation, lived in 

 amity, and did not advantage themselves in trade or with 

 the native women, as did all the other white men. And 

 they wondered. 



But they were convinced of the truth of their own re- 

 ligion. Their chiefs and priests replied : 



"If your first man and woman took the lizard's word 



