their ends. Churches demand for prosperity
a flock about the ministrant, business wants customers close to the
store, and government is more powerful where it can harangue and
proclaim, parade before and spy upon its subjects. Individualistic
and segregated domestic circles give rise to tax evasions, feuds,
and moonshining, plots and the growth of strong men. The city is
the corral where humans mill like cattle in a panic, are more easily
ridden down en masse, and become habitual buyers of unnecessary things.

The French, after their bold seizure of the island in the name of
liberty for the earnest friars, and sealing their brave conquest in
the blood of the obstinate Polynesian who had hated to learn a new
liturgy and to unlearn his old Protestant songs, feared that the
dispersion of the people upon their little plantations, to which
they were greatly attached, would make their Frenchifying a long
task. So, about sixty years ago, a governor, who, ten thousand miles
from his superiors, with an exchange of letters taking many months,
was an autocrat, decided that all the people of the same region must
be huddled in a village. His name was Gaultier de la Richerie. His
office was snatched from him by another politician before he could
carry out his plan, and only one village exemplified it. In all the
districts I had passed through from Papeete, while in each was the
knot of chefferie, churches, stores, and perhaps a house or two, the
other residences stretched along the entire length of the political
divisions, from six to eight miles.

I was approaching the exception, Tautira, which, though farthest of
all from the palace of the governor, had been chosen for the first
experiment, and which had adapted its life to the paternal will of
M. de la Richerie, now long since laid in the bosom of Pere Lachaise.

The estimable troubadour, Brault, had advised me of the history of
Tautira. It was seldom visited by white tourists, as even the post
brought by the diligence ended at Taravao, and letters for farther
on were carried afoot by the mutoi, or postman-policeman of the
adjoining district, who handed on to his contiguous confrere those
for more distant confines. But for centuries Tautira was known as a
focus of the wise, of priests, sorcerers, and doctors, and, said the
knowing Brault, especially of the dancers, and those who, he explained,
under the banner of Venus.

Ont vu maintes batailles
Et recu nombre d'en