plantation
of Atimaono--My host, the Chevalier Tetuanui.

Life in the country made me laugh at myself for having so long
stayed in the capital. The fever of Papeete had long since cooled
in my veins. A city man myself, I might have known that all
capitals are noxious. Great cities are the wens on the body of
civilization. They are aggregations of sick people, who die out
in the third generation. Greed builds them. Crowded populations
increase property values and buy more manufactured luxuries. The
country sends its best to perish in these huddlements. In America,
where money interests boom cities and proudly boast their corruption
in numbers, half the people are already in these webs in which the
spider of commerce eats its victims, but ultimately may perish for
lack of food. Brick and steel grow nothing.

I had made excursions from Papeete, but always carrying the poisons
of the town with me. At last my playmates deserted me. Lying Bill and
McHenry sailed on their schooner for the Paumotu and the Marquesas
islands, Landers left for Auckland, and Count Polonsky for a flying
visit to America. Llewellyn, though an interesting study, learned
in native ways, and with comparisons of Europe and America, was
too atrabilious, and, besides, had with his young partner, David,
abandoned himself to the night life, the cinema bars, with their
hilarious girls and men, the prize-fights, and the dancing on the
beach in the starlight. Schlyter, the tailor, an occasional companion,
was busied cutting and sewing a hundred uniforms for a war-ship's crew.

I bethought me of the letter Princess Noanoa Tiare had given me to
the chief of Mataiea, and with a bag I departed for that village at
daybreak, after taofe tau for four sous at Shin Bung Lung's Fare
Tamaaraa. The diligence was open at the sides and roofed with an
awning, and was drawn by two mules, with bells on their collars.

On the stage I paid twenty centimes a kilometre, or six and a half
cents a mile. It carried the mail, passengers, and freight. In every
district there was a mailbox on the fence of the chefferie, the chief's
office, and on the trees alongside the road at regular intervals,
and the driver took mails from people who hailed him. Arriving
at a chefferie, the stage halted, the district mutoi, or native
policeman-postman, appeared leisurely, opened the locked box on the
diligence, looked at ease over the contents, took out what he liked,
and put back the remainder,