precisely the same significance as the foregoing.  One is forced to the conclusion that the Arabian Nights stories of the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor were founded on a bed-rock of solid fact, and that Persian and Arab merchants, pirates and slave-traders, must have penetrated into these far-off waters, and brought their vile, effeminate luxury and shameful customs with them from Asia, of which transplanted iniquity, the parent soil half-forgotten, this word, like several others connected with revelry and vice, like a text in scarlet lettering, survives to this day.

The first Jesuit missionaries to the Caroline Islands found there an organization with privileges and somewhat the same objects as the Arioi, which was called Uritoi.  As “t” is a letter often omitted or altered in these island tongues, it is not hard by leaving it out to find a likeness in the names Arioi and Urioi.  The Carolines and Tahiti are thousands of miles apart, and not inhabited by the same race.

Ellis was a missionary incapable by education, experience, and temperament of appreciation of the artistic life of the Arioi.  He would have chased the faun into seclusion until he could clothe him in English trousers, and would have rendered the Venus of Milo into bits.  Despite an honest love for mankind and considerable discernment, he saw nothing in the Arioi but a logical and diabolical condition of paganism.  Artistry he did not rank high, nor, to find a reason for the Arioi, did he go back of Satan’s ceaseless seeking whom he may devour.

Bovis, a Frenchman, world traveled, having seen perhaps the frescos of Pompeii, and familiar with the histories of old Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, and Rome, knew that Sodom and Gomorrah had their replicas in all times, and that often such conduct as that of the Arioi was associated among ancient or primitive peoples with artistic and interesting manifestations.

He searched the memories of the old men and women for other things than abominations, and gave the Arioi a good name for possession of many excellent qualities and for a rare development of histrionic ability.  But more than being mere mimes and dancers, the Arioi were the warriors, the knights of that day and place, the men-at-arms, the chosen companions of the king and chiefs, and in general the bravest and most cultivated of the Tahitians.  They were an extended round-table for pleasure in peace and for counsel and deeds of derring-do in war.  The society was a nursery of chivalry, a company which recruited, but did not reproduce themselves.  They had a solid basis, and lasted long because the society kept out of politics.

The members never forgot the duty due their chiefs.  They accompanied them in their enterprises, and they killed their fellow-members in the enemy’s camp, as Masons fought Masons in the American Civil War and in the wars of Europe.  In peace they were epicures.  They consorted together only for pleasure and comfort in their reunions.  The Arioi made their order no stepping-stone to power or office, but in it swam in sensuous luxury, each giving his talents to please his fellows and to add luster to his society.