tailles
Depuis les pieds jusqu'au front.

The little boy and I chatted as the horse ambled at will, occasionally
urged to a trot by a shaking of the reins. The country as we progressed
became far more beautiful than that behind. A new wildness, not fierce
and rugged as between Vaiere and Puforatoai, but gentler and more
inviting, preluded the exquisite setting of the village. We had to
ford a stream three or four feet deep, the Vaitapiha, and the struggle
through it was a rare pleasure, the child on the back of the animal,
and I with the reins and a purau twig directing and commanding in
vain. We had to leap into the water and remove a boulder or two that
stymied the wheels. When we had pulled through to the opposite shore,
I was reduced to a dry pareu, and in it alone, barefooted, I reached
the rustic paradise, the loveliness of which was to content me more
than any spot except the strangely fascinating valley of Atuona in
the sad isle of Hiva-Oa.

In a delta formed by the Vaitapiha the settlement lay among tents
of verdure. For a mile it sprawled around a small point of land
which thrust out into the sea, and which was guarded by the most
wonderful of walls, a reef of madrepore, as solid as granite and sixty
feet wide. The road was arched by splendid trees of many kinds, and
facing it, every several hundred feet, was a home. Many of these were
cottages in modern style, but a dozen or so were the true Tahitian
fare, of bamboo and thatch. All were covered with flowering vines,
and surrounded by many fruiting trees.

"Tautira nei!" announced my coachman. "Tautira is here!"

He pulled up the horse. I had not given any thought to my lodging,
and I jumped out and looked around. The brook curved about a mango
grove, and under its high trees was a new native house, a replica
of the commodious dwellings of old days. I walked into the grove,
and was admiring the careful, but charming, arrangements of ferns
and orchids, which, though brought from the forests, had been fitted
into the scene to simulate a natural environment. All of a sudden
a something I could not see hurled itself from a limb upon my head,
and two affrighting paws seized my right ear and my hair, grown long
at Mataiea, and tried to tear them out by the roots, while at the
same time many fierce teeth closed, though without much effect, on
my tough and weathered shoulder. In horror at the attack, I covered
yards in two bounds, and my assailant was torn