After a repast, it being already late, we built a house to sleep in away from the dews of the heights, and Tiura recalled that the first Pomare took his name from a time when he had spent the night here and coughed from the exposure.  His followers had spoken of the po mare, meaning literally, night cough, and the euphony pleased the king so that he adopted the name and bequeathed it to four successors.  All these Polynesians took their names at birth or later from incidents in their own or others’ lives, as my own chief’s—­“Deal Coffin,” from a relative being buried in a sailor’s chest; “Press Me” because the chief so named had heard these as the last word uttered by a dying grandchild, and Dim Sight because his grandfather had weak eyes.

Taata Mata, the name of a charming Tahitian woman I knew, signifies “Man’s Eye,” her own large eyes, perhaps, explaining the name, and Mauu, the name borne by a Tahitian man of good family in Papeete, “Moist.”  In all Polynesia one found picture names for people, as among the American Indians, and as among all nations, though with Europeans the meanings are forgotten.  Moses means “Pulled out of the Water,” or “Water Baby.”  Some of our names of people and places have ridiculous import in Tahiti.  I remember Lovaina laughed immoderately, and called all the maids to view a line in the Tiare Hotel register in which a man had put himself down from “Omaha.”

After we had eaten, we sat smoking in the darkness, I feeling very close to the blue field of stars.  In the tropics the mountains, even so low as these, are impressive of a vast harmony of nature and of kinship with the force that rumpled them with its mighty hand.  They have always inspired great thoughts.  Moses framed in the mountains the ten taboos of Israel, which we hold as sacred as did the chosen people.  Jesus made the mountains the seat of his most important acts, and was there transfigured in glory.

We had been pointed out by Tiura a great crack in the precipice, called Apoo Taria, the “Hole of the Ears.”  In the bloody struggles of the ancient tribes here the conquerors cut off the ears of their victims—­some say their captives—­and threw them in this hole.

“Because of those ears,” said Tiura, “all the eels in this lake have very large ears, and it is so because the father of all the Mataiea folk was an eel.  We shall see the eels to-morrow, but I must tell you of the chief of the district of Arue, near Papeete, about which M. Tourjee, the American, wrote the himene.  The chief was married to a strong woman of this district, and in those days there were so many Tahitians that the mountains as well as the valleys were filled with them.  He had a pet puhi, an eel named Faaraianuu.  The eel had his home in a spring in the Arue district.  The spring is there to this day.”

“Oia ia!  It is true!” I interjected.  “I have seen it.”