n of fourteen years. To
her I talked Tahitian, as with all the family, in an effort to perfect
myself in that tongue.

I was happy that I had pulled up anchor in Papeete, and as contrast is,
after all, comparative, I felt like a New-Yorker who finds himself in
Arcadia, though I had thought Papeete, on first sight, the garden of
Allah. In Mataiea I realized the wonder of the Polynesian people, and
found my months with the whites of the city a fit background for study
of and ardent delight in the brown islanders I was to know so well.

Chapter XVII

My life in the house of Tetuanui--Whence came the Polynesians--A
migration from Malaysia--Their legends of the past--Condition of
Tahiti when the white came--The great navigator, Cook--Tetuanui tells
of old Tahiti.

Happiness in civilization consists in seeing life other than it really
is. At Mataiea the simple truth of existence was joy. In the house of
the chief, Tetuanui, I knew a peace of mind and body as novel to me
as my surroundings. For the first time since unconcerned childhood I
felt my heart leap in my bosom when the dawn awoke me, and was glad
merely that I could see the sun rise or the rain fall. All of us have
had that feeling on certain mornings; but was it not interwoven with
the affairs of the day--a picnic, a rendezvous, our wedding, a first
morning of the vacation encampment? In Mataiea it was spontaneous, the
harking back to a beneficent mood of nature; the very sense of being
stirring the blood in delight, and girding up the loins instantly to
pleasurable movement.

I slept without clothing, and in a bound was at the door, with my
pareu about me. Already the family had begun the leisurely tasks of the
day. The fowls were on the sward under the breadfruit and papaya-trees,
and the mina-birds were swooping down on the grass near them to profit
by their uncovering of food. Those discriminating birds are like the
Japanese, seldom pioneering in wild places, but settling on developed
lands to gain by the slower industry of other peoples. "Birds that
live on cows," the Tahitians call the minas, because where there are
enough ruminants each bird selects one, and spends the day upon its
back, eating the insects that infest its skin.

The sun at six barely lit the beach and revealed the lagoon,
into which a stream from the mountains poured within Tetuanui's
confines. I threw off my garment and plunged into a pool under a clump
of pandanus-trees. It was c