by the sun, reminded me again
that these people may trace back their ancestry to the Caucasian
cradle. The hair of the women was adorned with gay flowers or the
leaves of the false coffee bush. Their single garments of gorgeous
colors clung to their straight, rounded bodies, their dark eyes were
soft and full of light as the eyes of deer, and their features,
clean-cut and severe, were of classic lines.

The men, tall and massive, seemed awkwardly constricted in
ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear
over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through
the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made
the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on
a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual.
They wore no hats or ornaments, though it has ever been the custom
of all Polynesians to put flowers and wreaths upon their heads.

Men and women were waiting with a kind of apathetic resignation;
melancholy and unresisting despair seemed the only spirit left to
them.

On the veranda with the governor and Bauda were several whites, one
a French woman to whom we were presented. Madame Bapp, fat and
red-faced, in a tight silk gown over corsets, was twice the size of
her husband, a dapper, small man with huge mustaches, a paper collar
to his ears, and a fiery, red-velvet cravat.

On a table were bottles of absinthe and champagne, and several
demijohns of red wine stood on the floor. All our company attacked
the table freight and drank the warm champagne.

A seamy-visaged Frenchman, Pierre Guillitoue, the village butcher--a
philosopher and anarchist, he told me--rapped with a bottle on the
veranda railing. The governor, in every inch of gold lace possible,
made a gallant figure as he rose and faced the people. His whiskers
were aglow with dressing. The ceremony began with an address by a
native, Haabunai.

Intrepreted by Guillitoue, Haabunai said that the Marquesans were
glad to have a new governor, a wise man who would cure their ills, a
just ruler, and a friend; then speaking directly to his own people,
he praised extravagantly the newcomer, so that Guillitoue choked in
his translation, and ceased, and mixed himself a glass of absinthe
and water.

The governor replied briefly in French. He said that he had come in
their interest; that he would not cheat them or betray them; that he
would make them well if they were sick. Th