; "But he shall
not be able to hear," exclaimed the last. The tribe of Hapaa is said to
have numbered some four hundred when the small-pox came and reduced them
by one fourth. Six months later a woman developed tubercular
consumption; the disease spread like a fire about the valley, and in
less than a year two survivors, a man and a woman, fled from that
new-created solitude. A similar Adam and Eve may some day wither among
new races, the tragic residue of Britain. When I first heard this story
the date staggered me; but I am now inclined to think it possible. Early
in the year of my visit, for example, or late the year before, a first
case of phthisis appeared in a household of seventeen persons, and by
the month of August, when the tale was told me, one soul survived, and
that was a boy who had been absent at his schooling. And depopulation
works both ways, the doors of death being set wide open, and the door of
birth almost closed. Thus, in the half-year ending July 1888 there were
twelve deaths and but one birth in the district of the Hatiheu. Seven or
eight more deaths were to be looked for in the ordinary course; and M.
Aussel, the observant gendarme, knew of but one likely birth. At this
rate it is no matter of surprise if the population in that part should
have declined in forty years from six thousand to less than four
hundred; which are, once more on the authority of M. Aussel, the
estimated figures. And the rate of decline must have even accelerated
towards the end.

A good way to appreciate the depopulation is to go by land from Anaho to
Hatiheu on the adjacent bay. The road is good travelling, but cruelly
steep. We seemed scarce to have passed the deserted house which stands
highest in Anaho before we were looking dizzily down upon its roof; the
_Casco_ well out in the bay, and rolling for a wager, shrank visibly;
and presently through the gap of Tari's isthmus, Ua-huna was seen to
hang cloudlike on the horizon. Over the summit, where the wind blew
really chill, and whistled in the reed-like grass, and tossed the grassy
fell of the pandanus, we stepped suddenly, as through a door, into the
next vale and bay of Hatiheu. A bowl of mountains encloses it upon three
sides. On the fourth this rampart has been bombarded into ruins, runs
down to seaward in imminent and shattered crags, and presents the one
practicable breach of the blue bay. The interior of this vessel is
crowded with lovely and valuable trees,--or