The market-place faces the Mairie, the city hall, and its center is a fountain beloved of youth.  There sit or loll the maidens of Papeete at night, and titter as pass the sighing lads.  There wait the automobiles to carry the pleasure bent to Kelly’s grove at Fa’a, where the maxixe and the tango rage, the hula-dancers quiver and quaver, and wassail has no bounds.

When the whites are at dinner, the natives meet in the market-place, which is the agora, as the place du gouvernment is the forum of the dance and music of these ocean Greeks.

But at this hour it is wreathed with women, scores squat upon their mats on the pave, their goods spread before the eyes of the purchasers.

The sellers of the materials for hats are many.  The bamboo fiber, yellowish white, is the choicest, but there are other colors and stuffs.  The women venders smoke cigarettes and are always laughing.  Old crones, withered and feeble, shake their thin sides at their own and others’ jokes.

Already the buyers are coming fast, householders and cooks and bachelors and beaux, tourists and native beauties.

A score of groups are smoking and chatting, flirting and running over their lists.  Carriages and carts are tied everywhere, country folk who have come to sell or to buy, or both, and automobiles, too, are ranged beside the Mairie.

Matrons and daughters, many nationals, are assembling.  The wife of a new consul, a charming blonde, just from New Jersey, has her basket on her arm.  She is a bride, and must make the consul’s two thousand dollars a year go far.  A priest in a black gown and a young Mormon elder from Utah regard each other coldly.  A hundred Chinese cafe-keepers, stewards, and merchants are endeavoring to pierce the exteriors of the foods and estimate their true value.  The market is not open yet.  It awaits the sound of the gong, rung by the police about half past five.  Four or five of these officials are about, all natives in gaudy uniforms, their bicycles at the curb, smoking, and exchanging greetings with friends.

The question of deepest interest to the marketers is the fish.  The tables for these are railed off, and, peering through the barriers, the onlookers comment upon the kinds and guess at the prices.

The market-house is a shed over concrete floors, clean, sanitary, and occupied but an hour or two a day.  There are three main divisions of the market, meat, fish, and green things.  Meat in Tahiti is better uneaten and unsung.  It comes on the hoof from New Zealand.  Now, if you are an epicure, you may rent a cold-storage chamber in the glacerie, and keep your steaks and roasts until tender.

Fish is the chief item to the Tahitian.  Give him only fish, and he may murmur at his fate; but deny him fish, and he will hie him to the reef and snare it for himself.  All night the torches of the fishermen gleam on the foaming reef, and often I paddle out near the breakers and hear the chants and cries of the men as they thrust their harpoons or draw their nets.  So it is the women who sell the fish, while the weary husbands and fathers lie wrapped in dreams of a miraculous draught.