of sadness; such a feeling as I have known to sweep over an army the
night before a battle, when letters are written to loved ones and
comrades entrusted with messages.

That gaunt, dark shore itself recalls that the history of the
Marquesas is written in blood, a black spot on the white race. It is
a history of evil wrought by civilization, of curses heaped on a
strange, simple people by men who sought to exploit them or to mold
them to another pattern, who destroyed their customs and their
happiness and left them to die, apathetic, wretched, hardly knowing
their own miserable plight.

The French have had their flag over the Marquesas since 1842. In
1521 Magellan must have passed between the Marquesas and Paumotas,
but he does not mention them. Seventy-three years later a Spanish
flotilla sent from Callao by Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, viceroy
of Peru, found this island of Fatu-hiva, and its commander, Mendana,
named the group for the viceroy's lady, Las Islas Marquesas de
Mendoza.

One hundred and eighty years passed, and Captain Cook again
discovered the islands, and a Frenchman, Etienne Marchand,
discovered the northern group. The fires of liberty were blazing
high in his home land, and Marchand named his group the Isles of the
Revolution, in celebration of the victories of the French people. A
year earlier an American, Ingraham, had sighted this same group and
given it the name of his own beloved hero, Washington.

Had not Captain Porter failed to establish American rule in 1813 in
the island of Nuka-hiva, which he called Madison, the Marquesas
might have been American. Porter's name, like that of Mendana, is
linked with deeds of cruelty. The Spaniard was without pity; the
American may plead that his killings were reprisals or measures of
safety for himself. Murder of Polynesians was little thought of.
Schooners trained their guns on islands for pleasure or practice,
and destroyed villages with all their inhabitants.

"To put the fear of God in the nigger's hearts," were the words of
many a sanguinary captain and crew. They did not, of course, mean
that literally. They meant the fear of themselves, and of all whites.
They used the name of God in vain, for after a century and more of
such intermittent effort the Polynesians have small fear or faith
for the God of Christians, despite continuous labors of missionaries.
God seems to have forgotten them.

The French made the islands their political possessio