soft
intonation of the Tahitian. Some of the dishes and knives and forks
had belonged to Robert Louis Stevenson, who, said Tati, had given them
to him when he was departing from Tahiti. Tati's sister, a widow, was
of the party, and together we went to the Protestant churchyard to her
husband's tomb. It was imposing and costly, and the inscription read:

In Memory of Dorence Atwater, beloved husband of arii inoore Moetia
Salmon. Born at Terryville, Conn., Feb. 3, 1845. Died at San Francisco,
Cal., November 28, 1910. As a last tribute to his name there was
erected in his native state a monument with this inscription:

This memorial is dedicated to our fellow townsman, Dorence Atwater,
for his patriotism in preserving to this nation the names of 13,000
soldiers who died while prisoners at Andersonville, Ga.

He builded better than he knew; some day, perchance, in surprise he
may wake to learn:

He builded a monument more enduring than brass.

Tupuataroa.

The name given Atwater when he married Moetia Salmon was Tupuataroa,
which means a wise man. Mrs. Atwater was rich and melancholy. She
mourned her dead. Atwater had come to Tahiti as American consul, and
had piled franc on franc in trade and speculation, with great dignity
and success. He had been the leading American of his generation in
the South Seas, and had left no children.

Tati said that when the church was dedicated--it was a box-like
structure of wood and coral, whitewashed and red-roofed--three thousand
Tahitians had feasted in a thatched house erected for the arearea. The
himene-chorus was made up of singers from every district in Tahiti
and Moorea. Tati had presided.

"We ate for three days," he related to me. "More than two hundred
and fifty swine, fifteen hundred chickens, and enough fish to equal
the miraculous draft on the shores of Galilee. We Polynesians were
always that way, Gargantuan eaters at times, but able to go fifty
miles at top speed on a cocoanut in war."

Tati would have me stay indefinitely his guest, but I had written to
Mataiea of my intended arrival there, and though there were insistent
cries that I return soon, I said farewell.

Tati himself walked with me to the bridge over the Taharuu River,
one of the hundred and fifty streams I crossed in a circuit of Tahiti.

"My ancestor, the old chief Tati," he told me, "cut down the sacred
trees of our clan marae near by, the aitos, tamanus, and miros. He
had become a Christian, a