e ancient tribes here the conquerors cut off the ears of their
victims--some say their captives--and threw them in this hole.

"Because of those ears," said Tiura, "all the eels in this lake have
very large ears, and it is so because the father of all the Mataiea
folk was an eel. We shall see the eels to-morrow, but I must tell
you of the chief of the district of Arue, near Papeete, about which
M. Tourjee, the American, wrote the himene. The chief was married to
a strong woman of this district, and in those days there were so many
Tahitians that the mountains as well as the valleys were filled with
them. He had a pet puhi, an eel named Faaraianuu. The eel had his home
in a spring in the Arue district. The spring is there to this day."

"Oia ia! It is true!" I interjected. "I have seen it."

"One day," went on Tiura, "the chief remarked to his vahine that he
was starting up the mountain to see her grandparents. She wanted to go,
too, but he said that he would just hurry along, and be back in a day
or two. Against her will he went alone. He did come back in a day or
two, and to her questions replied that he had had a delightful visit
to her tupuna. After that he got the peu, the habit, of departing
for the mountains and remaining for hours daily. The chief's vahine
became anoenoe (curious) to see what was his real reason for making
these journeys every day. So she followed him secretly. She came
to the mountain, where she saw him stop by an umu, a native oven he
had evidently built before. He took out a bamboo, the kind in which
we cooked small pieces of meat, and she saw him draw out a piece of
meat and heard him say 'Maitai! Good!' as he ate it. She watched him
closely, and was anxious to know what meat he had cooked, for he had
said nothing about it.

"When he had left, she rushed to the oven, opened the bamboo, and
saw on pieces of meat the special tattoomarks of the thighs of her
grandmother and grandfather. Aue! She was riri. She fell to the earth
and wept, and then she was angry. She made up her mind to get even
with her false tane, and to hurt him the worst way possible. She
hurried to his spring by their home in Arue, and caught his pet eel,
Faaraianuu, who was sunning himself on the surface. She slashed him
with her knife of pearl shell, and baked him in an umu. She ate his
tail at once and put the remainder of the eel in a calabash. Then
she left, with the ipu in her hand, for Lake Vaihiria."

Tiura halted