looked about for a familiar
landmark, strolled a hundred paces, and found myself somewhere
I thought a kilometer distant. Everywhere there are shops kept
by Chinese, restaurants and coffee-houses. The streets all have
names, but change them as they progress, honoring some French hero
or statesman for a block or two, recalling some event, or plainly
stating the reason for their being. All names are in French, of course,
and many are quaint and sonorous.

As the sea-wall grew according to the demands of defense or commerce
the sections were rechristened. The quai des Subsistences tells its
purpose as does the quai de l'Uranie. The rue de l'Ecole and the rue
de la Mission, with the rue des Remparts, speak the early building
of school and Catholic church and fortifications.

Rue Cook, rue de Bougainville and many others record the giant figures
of history who took Tahiti from the mist of the half-known, and wrote
it on the charts and in the archives. Other streets hark back to that
beloved France to which these French exiles gaze with tearful eyes,
but linger all their years ten thousand miles away. They saunter
along the rue de Rivoli in Papeete, and see again the magnificence
of the Tuileries, and hear the dear noises of la belle Paris. They
are sentimental, these French, patriots all here, and overcome at
times by the flood of memories of la France, their birthplaces,
and their ancestral graves. Some born here have never been away, and
some have spent a few short months in visits to the homeland. Some
have brown mothers, half-islanders; yet if they learn the tripping
tongue of their French progenitor and European manners, they think
of France as their ultimate goal, of Paris their playground, and the
"Marseillaise" their himene par excellence.

One might conjure up a vision of a tiny Paris with such names in
one's ears, and these French, who have been in possession here nearly
four-score years, have tried to make a French town of Papeete.

They have only spoiled the scene as far as unfit architecture can,
but the riot of tropical nature has mocked their labors. For all
over the flimsy wooden houses, the wretched palings, the galvanized
iron roofing, the ugly verandas, hang gorgeous draperies of the giant
acacias, the brilliant flamboyantes, the bountiful, yellow allamanda,
the generous breadfruit, and the uplifting glory of the cocoanut-trees,
while magnificent vines and creepers cover the tawdry paint of the
facad