rule, it might prove the first stage
of transition from _t_ to _k_, which is the disease of Polynesian
languages. The tendency of the Marquesans, however, is to urge against
consonants, or at least on the very common letter _l_, a war of mere
extermination. A hiatus is agreeable to any Polynesian ear; the ear even
of the stranger soon grows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the
Marquesan will you find such names as _Haaii_ and _Paaaeua_, when each
individual vowel must be separately uttered.

These points of similarity between a South Sea people and some of my own
folk at home ran much in my head in the islands; and not only inclined
me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, but continually modified
my judgment. A polite Englishman comes to-day to the Marquesans and is
amazed to find the men tattooed; polite Italians came not long ago to
England and found our fathers stained with woad; and when I paid the
return visit as a little boy, I was highly diverted with the
backwardness of Italy: so insecure, so much a matter of the day and
hour, is the pre-eminence of race. It was so that I hit upon a means of
communication which I recommend to travellers. When I desired any detail
of savage custom, or of superstitious belief, I cast back in the story
of my fathers, and fished for what I wanted with some trait of equal
barbarism: Michael Scott, Lord Derwentwater's head, the second-sight,
the Water Kelpie--each of these I have found to be a killing bait; the
black bull's head of Stirling procured me the legend of _Rahero_; and
what I knew of the Cluny Macphersons, or the Appin Stewarts, enabled me
to learn, and helped me to understand, about the _Tevas_ of Tahiti. The
native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship grew warmer, and his
lips were opened. It is this sense of kinship that the traveller must
rouse and share; or he had better content himself with travels from the
blue bed to the brown. And the presence of one Cockney titterer will
cause a whole party to walk in clouds of darkness.

The hamlet of Anaho stands on a margin of flat land between the west of
the beach and the spring of the impending mountains. A grove of palms,
perpetually ruffling its green fans, carpets it (as for a triumph) with
fallen branches, and shades it like an arbour. A road runs from end to
end of the covert among beds of flowers, the milliner's shop of the
community; and here and there, in the grateful twilight, in an air
fille