f sermons echoed from chapels as we progressed, the voices
raised in the same tone one heard in a Methodist camp-meeting in
Kansas, and the singing, when in French, having much the same effect,
a whining, droning fashion; without spirituality or art.

But why look for a moment at these unfortunates or listen to their dull
chants when marvels of nature unfolded at every step! There was never
such luxuriant vegetation, never such a riot of color and richness of
growth as on every side. The wealth of the bougainvillea's masses of
lustrous magenta was matched by the dazzling flamboyant, trees forty
feet high, and their foliage a hundred in circumference, a sheen of
crimson. Clumps of bamboo as big as a city lot and towering to the
sky, with the yellow allamanda framing the bungalows, and a tangle
of bananas, lantana, tafeie, cocoas, and a hundred other fruits,
flowers and creepers, made the whole journey through a paradise.

Around many cocoanut-palms were bands of tin or zinc ten or twenty feet
from the earth. These were to foil the rats or crabs which climb the
trees and steal (can a creature steal from nature?) the nuts. Every
available piece of thin metal was used for this. The sheets were
often flattened kerosene- and gasoline-cans and were drawn taut and
smooth. These are impasses for the wily climbers.

"Ils ne passeront pas," said the French; "Aita haere!" the Tahitians.

The road was good, but narrow, in few places room for two to pass
except by turning out, skirting the beach at the water's-edge,
crossing causeways over inlets, and in admirable curves clinging to
the hillsides, which bathed in the sea. Moving over a small levee we
came to the pointe de Maraa, where was the Grotto of Maraa, a gigantic
recess worn in the solid wall of rock, a dark mysterious interior,
which gave me a momentary surge of my childhood dread and love of
caves and secret entrances to pirates' lairs. The diligence halted
at the request of M. Brault, and he and I jumped out and ran to the
grotto. In it was a lake with black waters, and down the face of the
cliff, which rose hundreds of feet straight, dripped a million drops of
the waters of the hills, so that the ground about was in puddles. The
inside walls and arched ceiling were covered with a solid texture of
verdant foliage, wet and fragrant. We found a little canoe fastened
to a stone, and adventured on the quiet surface of the pond until at
about eighty yards of penetration we ca