t is done in Samoa by a native
Government; but the French have bound their own hands, and for forty
thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death. This horrid
traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident. It was Captain Hart
who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it, at a time when
his plantations flourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty
in keeping Chinese coolies. To-day the plantations are practically
deserted and the Chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have
learned the vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needy
Government at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets. Of course
the patentee is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone; equally of course,
no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for the privilege of
supplying a scattered handful of Chinese; and every one knows the truth,
and all are ashamed of it. French officials shake their heads when opium
is mentioned; and the agents of the farmer blush for their employment.
Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones; as a subject of
the British crown, I am an unwilling shareholder in the largest opium
business under heaven. But the British case is highly complicated; it
implies the livelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can be
reformed at all, with prudence. This French business, on the other hand,
is a nostrum and a mere excrescence. No native industry was to be
encouraged: the poison is solemnly imported. No native habit was to be
considered: the vice has been gratuitously introduced. And no creature
profits, save the Government at Papeete--the not very enviable gentlemen
who pay them, and the Chinese underlings who do the dirty work.

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA

The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by the
coming and going of the French. At least twice they have seized the
archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the meanwhile the natives
pursued almost without interruption their desultory cannibal wars.
Through these events and changing dynasties, a single considerable
figure may be seen to move: that of the high chief, a king, Temoana.
Odds and ends of his history came to my ears: how he was at first a
convert of the Protestant mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from
his native land, served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for
small charge, in English seaports; how he returned at last to the
Marquesas, fe