t quarrel between
individuals was the statement a century ago of Captain Porter, the
American. Then as now the most perfect harmony prevailed among them.
They lived like affectionate brothers of one family, he said, the
authority of the chiefs being only that of fathers among children.
They had no mode of punishment for there were no offenders. Theft
was unknown, and all property was left unguarded. So Porter, who,
with his ship's company, killed so many Marquesans, was fully aware
of their civic virtues, their kindness, gentleness and generosity.

It is so to-day, in Vait-hua where the whites are not. I have had my
trousers lifted from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the
eyed and fingered bamboo of the Tagalog _ladron_, while I washed my
face, and stood aghast at the mystery of their disappearance with
door locked, until looking from my lofty window I beheld them moving
rapidly down an _estero_ in a _banca_. I have given over my watch to
a gendarme in Cairo to forfend arrest for having beaten an Arab who
tripped me to pick my pocket, and I have surrendered to the rapacity
of a major-general-uniformed official in Italy, who would
incarcerate me for not having a tail-light lit. In San Francisco,
when robbed upon the public street, I have listened while the police
suggested that I offer a fee to the "king of the dips" and a reward
to certain saloonkeepers to intercede with the unknown-to-me
highwaymen for the return of an heirloom.

Yet through the darkest nights in Vait-hua I slept serenely,
surrounded by all the possessions so desirable in the eyes of my
neighbors, in a house the doors of which were never fastened. There
was not a lock in all the village, or anything that answered the
purpose of one. The people of this isolated valley, forgetting their
brief encounter with the European idea of money and of the
accumulation of property, had reverted to the ways of their fathers.

Before interference with their natural customs the Marquesans were
communists to a large degree. Their only private property consisted
of houses, weapons, ornaments, and clothing, for the personal use of
the owner himself. All large works, such as the erection of houses,
the building of large canoes, and, in ancient days, the raising of
_paepaes_ and temples, were done by mutual cooperation; though
each family provided its own food and made provision for the future
by storing breadfruit in the _popoi_ pits. Neo, like the long line