r island,
would have cried out; for the cool, healthy, and modest lavalava or
kilt, Tartuffe has managed in many another island to substitute stifling
and inconvenient trousers. Lastly, and perhaps chiefly, so far from
their amusements having been curtailed, I think they have been, upon the
whole, extended. The Polynesian falls easily into despondency:
bereavement, disappointment, the fear of novel visitations, the decay or
proscription of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and
sadness detaches him from life. The melancholy of the Hawaiian and the
emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more
apposite to the Marquesas. In Samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song
and dance, perpetual games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated
and a smiling picture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the
gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. The
importance of this can scarcely be exaggerated. In a climate and upon a
soil where a livelihood can be had for the stooping, entertainment is a
prime necessity. It is otherwise with us, where life presents us with a
daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some of the heat of
conflict, in the mere continuing to be. So, in certain atolls, where
there is no great gaiety, but man must bestir himself with some vigour
for his daily bread, public health and the population are maintained;
but in the lotos islands, with the decay of pleasures, life itself
decays. It is from this point of view that we may instance, among other
causes of depression, the decay of war. We have been so long used in
Europe to that dreary business of war on the great scale, trailing
epidemics and leaving pestilential corpses in its train, that we have
almost forgotten its original, the most healthful, if not the most
humane, of all field sports--hedge-warfare. From this, as well as from
the rest of his amusements and interests, the islander, upon a hundred
islands, has been recently cut off. And to this, as well as to so many
others, the Samoan still makes good a special title.

Upon the whole, the problem seems to me to stand thus:--Where there have
been fewest changes, important or unimportant, salutary or hurtful,
there the race survives. Where there have been most, important or
unimportant, salutary or hurtful, there it perishes. Each change,
however small, augments the sum of new conditions to which the race has
to become inured. There may s