CHAPTER XXVI 



Farewell to Tautira — My good-bye feast — Back at the Tiare — A talk with 

 Lovaina — The Cercle Bougainville — Death of David — My visit to the 

 cemetery — Off for the Marquesas. 



THE smell of the burning wood of the Umuti was 

 hardly out of my nostrils before my day of leav- 

 ing Tautira came. I had long wanted to visit 

 the Marquesas Islands, and the first communication I 

 had from Papeete in nearly three months was from the 

 owners of the schooner Fetia Taiao, notifying me that 

 that vessel, commanded by Captain William Pincher, 

 would sail for the archipelago in a few days, "crew and 

 weather willing." I was eager for the adventure, to 

 voyage to the valley of Typee, where Herman Melville 

 had lived with Fayaway and Kori-Kori, where Captain 

 Porter had erected the American flag a century before, 

 and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their 

 most artistic development. But to sever the tie with 

 Tautira was saddening. Mataiea and the tribe of Tetu- 

 anui had won my affections, but at Tautira I had be- 

 come a Tahitian. I had hved in every way as if bred 

 in the island, and had fallen so in love with the people 

 and the mode of life, the peace and simplicity of the 

 place, that only the already formed resolution to visit 

 all the seas about stirred me to depart. 



The village united to say good-by to me at a feast 

 which was spread in the greenwood of the Greek god 

 along the shore of the lagoon. T'yonni and Choti, the 



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