was
all good-humored, as was the boxing.

Spear-throwing and stone-slinging at targets were both fun and
preparation for war, for in the battles the slingers took the
van. The stones were here, as in the Marquesas, as big as hens'
eggs, and rounded by the action of the streams in which they were
found. Braided cocoanut-fiber formed the sling, or flax was used,
and looped about the wrist the sling was flung down the back, whirled
about the head, and the missile shot with deadly force and accuracy.

Archery was associated with religion in Tahiti, as in Japan, between
which countries there are many strange similarities of custom. The
costumes of the bowmen and their weapons were housed in the temple, and
kept by devotees, and were removed and returned with ceremonies. The
bows, less than six feet, the arrows, half that long, were never
used in war or for striking a mark, but merely for distance shooting,
and the experts were credited with reaching a thousand feet.

Tatini had pointed out to me, when we walked the peninsula of Taravao,
a projecting rock, marked with deep-worn grooves, from which the
Tahitians once flew very large kites. These were tied to the rocks,
and the ropes of cocoanut sennit in the course of hundreds of years
had worn the stones away. Often when the wind was favorable, they
intrusted themselves to their kites, and slipping the ropes, flew
to the opposite side of the bay, forerunners in the air of a certain
Lyonnais of 1783, and contemporaneous with the Siamese who centuries
ago indulged their levitative dreams by leaping with parachutes.

Alfred had registered all these obsolete things in his memory, while
most Tahitians had no detailed knowledge of them, being crammed with
the lore of theology, of saints, of automobiles, and moving pictures,
and prize-fights for money. Matatini Afaraauia, son of Faaruia,
of chiefly descent, a boy of seven, and of a guileless, bewitching
disposition, made me his intimate friend, and through his sharp
eyes I discovered phenomena that might have escaped my untutored
mind. He lifted a stone, and beneath it was a spider larger than a
tarantula. It was tabu to Tahitians, harmless, and a voracious eater of
insects. Spiders are larger in these tropics than elsewhere, and here,
too, the male was smaller than the female. Being seized and slain and
devoured by his lady love even in the very transports of husbandly
affection, it had been bitten in on his subconscious sensi