She ran to her boudoir behind the bird’s-nest fern, and soon returned in her tunic, still barefoot, and with her pareu in her hand for drying on a rock.  She brought two wreaths now and put one upon me.  We resumed our couches upon the green sward, and the princess laid the basket of fruit between us.

“Maintenant pour le dejeuner!” she said.

We ate the bananas first, and then the pineapple, which we cut with a sliver of basalt,—­we were in the stone age, as her tribe was when the whites came,—­and last the oranges.  She made cups of leaves and filled them with water, and into them we squeezed the limes for a toast.

“Inu i te ota no te!” she said and lifted her cup.  “A health to you!  He who eats the fei passes under a spell; he must return again to the islands.  Have you eaten the fei?”

“Not yet, Princess,” I replied.

“There they are in abundance on the hillside,” she said.  “Look!  If we had fire, I would roast one for you, but to-morrow will be another day.”

The fei, the mountain banana, the staple of the Tahitian, was there aplenty.  The plant or stalk was that of the banana, but very dark at the base, and the leaves thicker.  The fruit was two or three times as large, and red, and a striking difference was that it was placed on the bunches erect, while bananas hang down from the stem.

I drank to her increasing charm, and I told her how much the beauty and natural grace of the Tahitians appealed to me; how I intended to leave Papeete and go to the end of the island to be among the natives only; that I had remained thus long in the city to learn first the ways of the white in the tropics, and then to gain the contrast by seeking the Tahitian as nearly as possible in his original habitat.

Noanoa Tiare took the orange-peel and rubbed it upon her hair.

“Noanoa!” she said.  “Mon ami americain, I will give you a note to Aruoehau a Moeroa, the tava, or chief of Mataiea district, and you can stay with him.  You will know him as Tetuanui.  He will gladly receive you, and he is wise in our history and our old customs.  Do not expect too much!  We ate in the old day the simple things at hand, fish and breadfruit, feis and cocoanut milk, mangoes and bananas and oranges.  Now we eat the dirty and prepared food of the Tinito, the Chinaman, and we depend on coffee and rum and beer for strength.  The thin wheat bread has no nourishment compared with the breadfruit and the fei, the yam and the taro.  And clothes!  The fools taught us that the pareu, which left the body exposed to the air, clean and refreshed by the sun and the winds, was immodest.  We exchanged it for undershirts and trousers and dresses and shoes and stockings and coats, and got disease and death and degeneration.