came from
their early life there. Man pushed back from the salt water slowly.

The official affairs of the chefferie, beyond the repair of roads and
bridges, were few. Crime among Tahitians being almost unknown, the
chief's duties as magistrate were negligible, and the family uttered
many aues when I related to them the conditions of our countries,
with murders, assaults, burglaries and rapine as daily news. The
French law required a civil ritual for marriage, and Tetuanui tied the
legal knots in his district. I was at the chefferie when a union was
performed. The bride and groom were of the middle class of prosperous
landholders. They arrived in an automobile wonderfully adorned with
flowers, with great bouquets of roses and ferns on the lamps. They
were accompanied by cars and carriages filled with their families and
friends. The bride was in a white-lace dress from Paris, with veil and
orange-blossoms, and the groom in a heavy black frock-coat over white
drill trousers with lemon-colored, tight shoes; both looking very ill
at ease and hot. The father of the groom must have us to the church
and to the wedding feast, so Brooke and I rode in a cart, I on the
mother's lap, and the poet on the knees of the father. The jollity of
the arearea was already apparent, and the father vainly whipped his
horse to outspeed the automobile. All the vehicles raced along the
road and into the yard of the Protestant church of Mataiea at top gait.

It was the season of assemblage of the manu patia, the wasps brought
from abroad, and quite ten thousand were clustered on the church
ceiling, while thousands more patrolled the air just over our heads,
courting and quarreling, buzzing and alighting on our heads and
necks. The preacher in a knee-length Prince Albert of black wool,
opened so that I saw he had nothing but an undershirt beneath,
recited the ceremony and addressed the couple. He took a ring from
his trousers-pocket, unwrapping and opening its box. A bridesmaid in a
rose-colored satin gown had taken off the bride's glove, and the pastor
put the ring upon her finger. A number of young men acted as aids
and witnesses, and all who stood were pounced upon by the wasps. They
betrayed no evidence of nervousness, but at the installation of the
ring, the groom, with a desperate motion, tore off his stiff collar
and bared his robust neck. He did not replace it that day. The bride's
mother wept upon my shoulder throughout the quarter of an