le elements of humor and
joyousness. They were essentially a happy people, full of dramatic
feeling, emotional, and with a keen sense of the ridiculous. The
rule of the trader crushed all these native feelings.

To this restraint was added the burden of the effort to live. With
the entire Marquesan economic and social system disrupted, food was
not so easily procurable, and they were driven to work by commands,
taxes, fines, and the novel and killing incentives of rum and opium.
The whites taught the men to sell their lives, and the women to sell
their charms.

Happiness and health were destroyed because the white man came here
only to gratify his cupidity. The priests could bring no inspiration
sufficient to overcome the degradation caused by the traders. The
Marquesan saw that Jesus had small influence over their rulers.
Civilization lost its opportunity because it gave precept, but no
example.

Even to-day, one white man in a valley sets the standard of sobriety,
of kindness, and honor. Jensen, the frank and handsome Dane who
works for the Germans at Taka-Uka who was in the breadline in New
York and swears he will never return to civilization, told me that
when he kept a store in Hanamenu, near Atuona, to serve the bare
handful of unexterminated tribesmen there, the people imitated him
in everything, his clothes, his gestures, his least-studied actions.

"I was the only white. I planted a fern in a box. Every one came to
my store and, feigning other reasons, asked for boxes. Soon every
_paepae_ had its box of ferns. I asked a man to snare four or five
goats for me in the hills. They were the first goats tethered or
enclosed in the valley. Within a week the mountains were harried for
goats, and the village was noisy with their bleating. I ate my goats;
they ate theirs. Not one was left. When I forsook Hanamenu, the
whole population moved with me. Sure, I was decent to them, that was
all.

"I never want to see the white man's country again. I have starved
in the big cities, and worked like a dog for the banana trust in the
West Indies. I have begged a cup of coffee in San Francisco, and
been fanned by a cop's club. Here I make almost nothing, I have many
friends and no superiors, and I am happy."

Had these lovable savages had a few fine souls to lead them, to
shield them from the dregs of civilization heaped on them for a
century, they might have developed into a wonder race to set a pace
in beauty, courage,