and
the scent of the cooked breadfruit fills the air, and perhaps the lamp
glints already between the pillars of the house, you shall behold them
silently assemble to this meal, men, women, and children; and the dogs
and pigs frisk together up the terrace stairway, switching rival tails.
The strangers from the ship were soon equally welcome: welcome to dip
their fingers in the wooden dish, to drink cocoa-nuts, to share the
circulating pipe, and to hear and hold high debate about the misdeeds of
the French, the Panama Canal, or the geographical position of San
Francisco and New Yo'ko. In a Highland hamlet, quite out of reach of any
tourist, I have met the same plain and dignified hospitality.

I have mentioned two facts--the distasteful behaviour of our earliest
visitors, and the case of the lady who rubbed herself upon the
cushions--which would give a very false opinion of Marquesan manners.
The great majority of Polynesians are excellently mannered; but the
Marquesan stands apart, annoying and attractive, wild, shy, and refined.
If you make him a present he affects to forget it, and it must be
offered him again at his going: a pretty formality I have found nowhere
else. A hint will get rid of any one or any number; they are so fiercely
proud and modest; while many of the more lovable but blunter islanders
crowd upon a stranger, and can be no more driven off than flies. A
slight or an insult the Marquesan seems never to forget. I was one day
talking by the wayside with my friend Hoka, when I perceived his eyes
suddenly to flash and his stature to swell. A white horseman was coming
down the mountain, and as he passed, and while he paused to exchange
salutations with myself, Hoka was still staring and ruffling like a
gamecock. It was a Corsican who had years before called him _cochon
sauvage_--_cocon chauvage_, as Hoka mispronounced it. With people so
nice and so touchy, it was scarce to be supposed that our company of
greenhorns should not blunder into offences. Hoka, on one of his visits,
fell suddenly in a brooding silence, and presently after left the ship
with cold formality. When he took me back into favour, he adroitly and
pointedly explained the nature of my offence: I had asked him to sell
cocoa-nuts; and in Hoka's view articles of food were things that a
gentleman should give, not sell; or at least that he should not sell to
any friend. On another occasion I gave my boat's crew a luncheon of
chocolate and biscui