hour. Not
a trace was indicated of the old wedding customs of the Tahitians,
as Christianity had effaced them rigorously, and though the Tahitians
had had plenty of ceremonies for all public acts, as had the Greeks
and Romans, many had been forgotten under the scourge of orthodoxy
before any white wrote freely of the island. They are lost to record
with the old language.

After the rite, all made a dash for their equipages, and raced for the
bride's home, where, as customary, the fete champetre was given. Again
on mama's lap, and Brooke on papa's, both ample, we hurried,
the bon pere not averse to taking a wheel off the bridal party's
motor-car. With cries of delight we drove into a great cocoanut-grove,
and a thousand feet back from the Broom Road emerged into a sunlit,
but shady, clearing. Huro! the banquet was already being spread. From
different parts of the plantation men came bearing huge platters of
roasted pig, chicken, taro, breadfruit, and feis, with bamboo tubes
of the taiaro sauce like the reeds of a great pipe-organ. Caldrons
of shrimp, crabs, prawns, and lobsters bubbled, and monstrous heaps
of tiny oysters were being opened. Fresh fruit was in rich hoards:
bananas, oranges, custard-apples, papayas, pomegranates, mangoes,
and guavas.

A magnificent bower a hundred feet long, broad and high, had been
erected of bamboo and gigantic leaves. It was similar to a temple
builded by the ardent worshipers of Dionysus to celebrate the
vine-god's feast. The roof of green thatch was supported on a score
of the slender pillars of the ohe, the golden bamboo, and there
were neither sides nor doors. The pillars were wreathed with ferns
and orchids from the forest near by, and on the sward between them
were spread a series of yellow mats woven in the Paumotu atolls. They
carpeted the green floor of the temple, and upon them, in the center,
the graceful leaves of the cocoanut stretched to mark the division
of the vis-a-vis.

From these long leaves rose graduated alabaster columns, the inner
stalks of the banana-plants, and on them were fastened flowers
and ornaments, fanciful creations of the hands of Tahitian women,
fashioned of brilliant leaves and of bamboo-fiber and the glossy white
arrowroot-fiber. From the top of each column floated the silken film of
the snowy reva-reva, the exquisite component of the interior of young
cocoa-palm-leaves, a gossamer substance the extraction of which is as
difficult as the blowin