We sat again in this wild garden of the tropic to invite our souls to drink the beauty and quietude, the absence of mankind and the nearness of nature.  We became very still, and soon heard the sounds of bird and insect above the lower notes of the brawling stream.

The princess put her finger on her lips and whispered in my ear: 

“Do you hear the warbling of the omamao and the olatare?  They are our song-birds.  They are in these high valleys only, for the mina has frightened them from below—­the mina that came with the ugly Chinese.”

“Noanoa Tiare,” said I, “you Tahitians are the birds of paradise of the human family.  You have been driven from the rich valleys of your old life to hills of bare existence by the minas of commerce and politics.  I feel like apologizing for my civilization.”

She pressed my hand.

“Taisez-vous!” she replied, smiling.  “Aita peapea.  I am always happy.  Remember I still live in Tahiti, and this is my time.  My foremothers’ day is past.  Allons!  We will be soon at the vaimato, and there we will have the dejeuner.”

As we moved on I saw that the yellow flowers of the purau, dried red by the sun,—­poultices for natives’ bruises,—­and candlenuts in heaps,—­torches ready to hand,—­littered the moss.

The mountain loomed in the distance, and the immense Pic du Francais towered in shadow.  Faintly I heard the boom of the waterfall, and knew we were nearing the goal.

The canon grew yet narrower and darker, and the crash of water louder.  We had again attained a considerable height over the stream, and the trail seemed lost.  The princess took my hand, and cautiously feeling the creepers and plants under our feet, we slipped and crept down the hidden path.  Suddenly, the light became brilliant, and I found myself in a huge broken bowl of lava rock, the walls almost vertical.  From the summit of the precipice facing me fell a superb cascade into a deep and troubled tarn.  The stream was spun silver in the sun, which now was warm and splendid.  So far it fell that much of it never reached the pool as water, but, blown by the gentle breeze, a moiety in spume and spray wet the earth for an acre about.  Like the veil of a bride, the spindrift spread in argent clouds, and a hundred yards away dropped like gentle rain upon us.  Verdure covered everything below except where the river ran from the tarn and hurried to the lesser things of the town.  The giant walls, as black as the interior of an old furnace, were festooned with magnificent tree ferns, the exquisite maidenhair, lianas, and golden-green mosses, all sparkling in the sun with the million drops of the vaimato.

We withdrew a few paces from the vapor, and found a place on the edge of the brook to have our fruit and, perhaps, a siesta.  A carpet of moss and green leaves made a couch of Petronian ease, and we threw ourselves upon it with the weariness of six miles afoot uphill in the tropics.  It was not hot like the summer heat of New York, for Tahiti has the most admirable climate I have found the world over, but at midday I had felt the warmth penetratingly.  Noanoa Tiare made nothing of it, but suggested that we both leap into the tarn.