t the only natural or existing social system, was in fact
developed very lately among all races except the Caucasian and some
tribes of the Mongols. Yet in the Marquesas, these islands cut off
from all other peoples through ages of history, the father-right
prevailed in spite of all the difficulties that attended its
survival in polyandry.

Each woman had many husbands, whom she ruled. The true paternity of
her children it was impossible to ascertain. Yet so tenaciously did
the Marquesans cling to the father-right in the child, that even
this fact could not break it down. One husband was legally the
father of all her children, ostensibly at least the owner of the
household and of such small personal property as belonged to it
under communism. The man remained, though in name only, the head of
the polyandrous family.

I seemed to see in this curious fact another proof of the ancient
kinship between the first men of my own race and the prehistoric
grandfathers of Malicious Gossip and Haabunai. My savage friends,
with their clear features, their large straight eyes and olive skins,
showed still the traces of their Caucasian blood. Their forefathers
and mine may have hunted the great winged lizards together through
primeval wildernesses, until, driven by who knows what urge of
wanderlust or necessity, certain tribes set out in that drive
through Europe and Asia toward America that ended at last, when a
continent sunk beneath their feet, on these islands in the southern
seas.

It was a far flight for fancy to take, from my _paepae_ in the
jungle at the foot of Temetiu, but looking at the beauty and grace
of Malicious Gossip as she sat on my mats in her crimson _pareu_, I
liked to think that it was so.

"We are cousins," I said to her, handing her a freshly-opened
cocoanut which Exploding Eggs brought.

"You are a great chief, but we love you as a blood-brother," she
answered gravely, and lifted the shell bowl to her lips.

CHAPTER XI

Filling the _popoi_ pits in the season of the breadfruit; legend of
the _mei_; the secret festival in a hidden valley.

On the road to the beach one morning I came upon Great Fern, my
landlord. Garbed in brilliant yellow _pareu_, he bore on his
shoulders an immense _kooka_, or basket of cocoanut fiber, filled
with quite two hundred pounds of breadfruit. The superb muscles
stood out on his perfect body, wet with perspiration as though he
had come from the river.

"Kaoha, Gr