ncient nude dances in indescribable orgies of abandonment and
bestiality.

_Namu enata_ means literally "man booze." The Persian-Arabic word,
_nam_, or _narm-keffi_, means "the liquid from the palm flower."
From this one might think that Asia had taught the Marquesans the
art of making _namu_ during their prehistoric pilgrimage to the
islands, but the discoverers and early white residents in Polynesia
saw no drunkenness save that of the _kava_-drinking. It was the
European, or the Asiatic brought by the white, who introduced
comparatively recently the more vicious cocoanut-brandy, as well as
rum and opium, and it is these drinks that have been a potent factor
in killing the natives.

It has ever been thus with men of other races subjugated by the
whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he
was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and
his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no
rum until the treaty they earnestly sought was concluded, and that
then they should have plenty.

He pictures an all-night debauch of the red men after they had
signed the treaty, and concludes: "And, indeed, if it be the design
of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for
cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be
the appointed means. It has annihilated all the tribes who formerly
inhabited the sea-coast."

It was not for me to speculate upon the designs of Providence with
respect to the Marquesans. _Kava_ had been the drink ordained by the
old gods before the white men came. Its making was now almost a lost
art; I knew no white man who had ever drunk from the _kava_-bowl. So
it was with some eagerness that I followed Kivi down the trail.

Broken Plate, a sturdy savage in English cloth cap and whale's-teeth
earrings, stood waiting for us in the road below the House of
the Golden Bed, and together the three of us went in search of
the _kava_ bush. While we followed the narrow trail up the
mountain-side, peering through masses of tangled vines and shrubs
for the large, heart-shaped leaves and jointed stalks we sought,
Kivi spoke with passion of the degenerate days in which he lived.

Let others secretly make incisions in the flower of the cocoanut and
hang calabashes to catch the juice, said he. Or let them crook the
hinges of the knee that rum might follow fawning on the whites. Not
he! The drink of his fathers, the drink of h