his tale a minute to point out the constellation of the
Scorpion, and to say, "Those stars are Pipiri Ma, the children, who
lived at Mataiea long ago. That is a strange story of their leaving
their parents' house for the sky!"

"Aue! Tiura," said I, "the stars are fixed, but there was the vahine
with all but the tail of Faaraianuu in her ipu, walking toward this
very spot. What became of her?"

The son of Tetuanui smiled, and continued:

"On her way she stopped to see the sorcerer, Tahu-Tahu and his
vahine. They were friends. After a paraparau, the usual gossip of
women, they asked her what she had in her calabash, and she replied,
'Playthings.' Then they told her her journey would be unsuccessful,
but she kept on to this lake and put the remains of the eel in the
water, right here where we are. But the eel would not stay in the
lake, and though time and again she threw him in, he always came
out. Finally she put him back in her ipu and returned to the house
of Tahu-Tahu. She told her misfortune, and Tahu-Tahu made passes and
thrashed about with the sacred ti-leaves, and commanded her to put
Faaraianuu in the lake again. This she did, and he stayed, but even
now, if you put a cocoanut in this lake at this spot, it will come
out at the spring in Arue. The eel still has power over that spring."

Tiura spoke in Tahitian and French, and I handed on his narrative.

"The eel in Tahiti, from what I hear, has seen better days,"
commented the Queensland doctor. "All over the world the primitive
people endowed this humble form of animal--the serpentine--with a
cunning and supernatural power surpassing that of the four-footed
creatures. I think it was because in the cradle of the human family
there were so many hurts from the bites of snakes and sea-eels--they
couldn't guard against them--that man salved his wounds by crediting
his enemy with devilish qualities. That's the probable origin of the
garden of Eden myth."

Again Tiura spoke of the Scorpion in the sky, and I knew he desired
to talk of Pipiri Ma. The other Tahitians were already under the roof
on their backs, upon the soft bed of dried leaves gathered by them
for all of us, but the long, lean physician listened with unabated
interest. He had run away for a change from the desert-like interior
of his vast island, where he treated the ills of a large territory
of sheep-herders, and to be on this mountain under such a benignant
canopy, and to hear the folk-lore of t