.

There were many speeches by Tahitians, most of them long, and
some referring to the happy couple and their progeny in the quaint
way of the medieval French in the chamber scenes after marriage,
as related in story and drama. The pastors depressed their mouths,
the deacons filled theirs with food to stifle their laughter, and the
groom was the subject of flattering raillery. The women did not sit
down, because mostly occupied in the service; but the hetairae, Miri,
Caroline, and Maraa, entertained the bachelors without criticism or
competition. The Tahitian women had no jealousy of these wantons, or,
at least, no condemnation of them. They have always had the place in
Polynesia that certain ancient nations gave them, half admired and
half tolerated. They had official note once a year when the most
skilful of them received the government cachet for excellence in
dances before the governor and his cabinet celebrating the fall of
the Bastile. They became quite as well known in their country by their
performance on those festal days as our greatest dancers or actresses.

When the mats became deserted, and the pastors had taken their carts
for their homes, a little elated but still quoting holy writ, the
nymphs and a dozen other girls of seething mirth took possession of the
temple with a score of young men, and sang their love-songs and set
the words to gesture and somatic harmony. Brooke and I lay and mused
as we listened and gazed. When a youth crowned with ferns began to play
a series of flageolets with his nose, the poet put his foot on mine.

"We are on Mount Parnassus," he whispered. "The women in faun
skins will enter in a moment, swinging the thyrsus and beating the
cymbals. Pan peeps from behind that palm. Those are his pipes, as
sure as Linus went to the dogs."

I met others of the royal family than the former queen, Marao, and her
daughters, the Princesses Tekau and Boots, at an amuraa maa given at
the mansion of Tetuanui. The preparations occupied several days, and
we all assisted in the hunt for the oysters, shrimp, crabs, mao, and
fish, going by twos and threes to the lagoon, the reef, the stream, and
the hills for their rarest titbits. The pigs and fowl were out of the
earth by the day of the feast, and Haamoura and Tatini set the table,
a real one on legs. The veranda was elegantly decorated with palms,
but the table was below stairs in the cooler, darker, unwalled rooms,
on the black pebbles brought f