a quarter of a century. We had no
alcohol until the whites brought it." Tetuanui ended with a line of
Brault's song about Pomare: "Puisqu'il est mort ... N'en parlons plus!"

Mataiea was the farthest point on Tahiti from Papeete I had reached,
and wishing to see more of the island, I set out on foot with Tatini,
my handmaid. We bade good-bye to Tetuanui and Haamoura and all the
family after the dawn breakfast. Mama Tetuanui cried a few moments
from the pangs of separation, and the chief wrung my hand sorrowfully,
though I was to be back in a few days.

From the reef at Mataiea I had glimpsed the south-west of Tahiti, the
lower edge of the handle of the fan-shaped double isle, mountainous and
abrupt in form, and called commonly the presqu'ile de Taiarapu. The
chief said that at the isthmus of Taravao, the junction of the fan
and handle, there was the Maison des Varos, a famous roadhouse, kept
by M. Butscher, where one might have the best food in Tahiti if one
notified the host in advance.

"One must wake him up," said Tetuanui. "He is asleep most of the time."

I wrote him a letter, and on the day appointed, Tatini and I,
barefooted, started. We went through Tetuanui's breadfruit-grove,
and there, as wherever were choice growths, I stopped to examine and
admire. No other tree except the cocoa equals the maori in usefulness
and beauty. The cocoa will grow almost in the sea and in any soil,
but the breadfruit demands humus and a slight attention. The cocoas
flourish on hundreds of atolls where man never sees them, but the
maoris ask a clearing of the jungle about their feet. The timber
of the breadfruit is excellent for canoes and for lumber, and its
leaves, thick and glossy, and eighteen inches long by a foot broad,
are of account for many purposes, including thatch and plates. There
are half a hundred varieties, and each tree furnishes three or four
crops a year, hundreds of fruits as big and round as plum-puddings,
green or yellow on the tree, pitted regularly like a golf-ball,
in lozenge-shaped patterns. The bark of the young branches was used
for making a tough tapa, native cloth, and resin furnishes a glue
for calking watercraft. The tree bears in the second or third year,
is hardy, but yields its life to a fungus, for which there is no
remedy except, according to the natives, a lovely lily that grows in
the forest. Transplanted, at the roots of the maori, the lily heals
its disease and drives away the parasite.