The way in which one wears a flower supposedly signifies many things.  If one wore it over the left ear, one sought a sweetheart; if over the right, it signified contentment, and though it was as common as the wearing of hats, there were always jokes passing about these flowers, exclamations of surprise or wishes of joy.

“What, you have left Terii?”

“Aita.  No.”

“Aue!  I must change it at once.”

Now, really there was no such idea in the native mind.  It was invention for tourists.  The Tahitian wears flowers anywhere, always, if he can have them, and they do express his mood.  If he is sad, he will not put them on; but if going to a dance, to a picnic, or to promenade, if he has money in his pocket, or gaiety in his heart, he must bloom.  Over one ear, or both, in the hair, on the head, around the neck, both sexes were passionately fond of this age-old sign of kinship with nature.  The lei in Hawaii around the hat or the neck spells the same meaning, but the flood of outsiders has lost Hawaii all but the merest remnant of its ancient ways, while here still persisted customs which a century of European difference and indifference has not crushed out.  Here, as there, more lasting wreaths for the hat were woven of shells or beads in various colors.

As I strolled past the houses, every one greeted me pleasantly.

“Ia ora na,” they said, or “Bonjour!” I replied in kind.  I had not been a day in Tahiti before I felt kindled in me an affection for its dark people which I had never known for any other race.  It was an admixture of friendship, admiration, and pity—­of affection for their beautiful natures, of appreciation of the magnificence of their physical equipment, and of sympathy for them in their decline and inevitable passing under the changed conditions of environment made by the sudden smothering of their instinctive needs in the sepia of commercial civilization.  I saw that those natives remaining, laughing and full of the desire for pleasure as they were, must perish because unfit to survive in the morass of modernism in which they were sinking, victims of a system of life in which material profits were the sole goal and standard of the rulers.

The Tahitians are tall, vigorous, and superbly rounded.  The men, often more than six feet or even six and a half feet in height, have a mien of natural majesty and bodily grace.  They convey an impression of giant strength, reserve power, and unconscious poise beyond that made by any other race.  American Indians I have known had much of this quality when resident far from towns, but they lacked the curving, padded muscles, the ease of movement, and, most of all, the smiling faces, the ingratiating manner, of these children of the sun.

The Tahitians’ noses are fairly flat and large; the nostrils dilated; their lips full and sensual; their teeth perfectly shaped and very white and sound; their chins strong, though round; and their eyes black and large, not brilliant, but liquid.  Their feet and hands are mighty—­hands that lift burdens of great weight, that swing paddles of canoes for hours; feet that tread the roads or mountain trails for league on league.