diligence did not run farther than Taravao, and the
next day, with my impedimenta in the cart, and with a boy to drive
it, I turned my back on the road to Papeete, and began the jog trot
to the famous, but hardly ever visited, district of Tautira.

I counted it the third stage in my pilgrimage in Tahiti. The first
had been in and about the capital, mingling mostly with white men,
and living in a public inn; the second at Mataiea had taken me far
from those rookeries, and had introduced me to the real Tahitians,
to their language, their customs, and their hearts; but still I had
been a guest, and a cared-for and guarded white among aborigines. Now
I wanted to cut off entirely from the main road, to sequester myself
in a faraway spot, and to live as close to the native as was possible
for me. My time was drawing near for departure. I must see all of the
Etablissements Francais de l'Oceanie, the blazing Paumotu atolls,
and the savage Marquesas, and I must make the most of the several
months yet remaining for me in Tahiti.

The highway along the eastern portion of the Presqu'ile was much
like that between Taravao and Puforatoai, tortuous, constricted,
and often forced to hang upon a shelf carved out of the precipice
which hemmed it. The route hugged the sea, but at every turn I
saw inland the laughing, green valleys, deserted of inhabitants,
climbing slowly between massive walls of rock to which clung great
tree ferns, with magnificent vert parasols, enormous clumps of feis,
with huge, emerald or yellow upstanding bunches of fruit; candlenut-
and ironwood-trees. Uncounted, delicious odors filled the air,
distilled from the wild flowers, the vanilla, orchids, and the forests
of oranges, which, though not of Tahiti, were already venerable in
their many decades of residence. Not a single path struck off from the
belt road, except that as we came toward the centers of Afaahiti and
Pueu districts the inevitable store or two of the Chinese appeared,
the cheferie, a church or two, and the roofs of the Tahitians. These
were always near the beach, set back a few hundred feet from the
road in rare instances, but mostly only a few steps from it. The
Tahitian never lived in hamlets, as the Marquesan and the Samoan,
but each family dwelt in its wood of cocoanuts and breadfruit, or
a few families clustered their inhabitants for intimacy and mutual
aid. The whites, missionaries, conquerors, and traders found this
system not conducive to