“I feel, I feel, I feel,
    I feel like a morning star!”

he struck his thigh, and said, “Ea!  That is the very thing!” And to be fair to all races, one has only to listen to an American assemblage singing “The Starspangled Banner” to learn that after the first few lines most patriots decline into “ah-ah-la-la-ha-la-ah-la-la.”

Before our supper of fish and fei, Teta, who was a deacon in the Protestant church, but of superior knowledge of his own tongue and legends, asked a blessing of God, and afterward recited for me the Tahitian chant of creation, the source of which was in the very beginnings of his race, perhaps even previous to the migration from Malaysia.  He intoned it, solemnly, as might have an ancient prophet in Israel, as we sat in the starlit night, with the profound notes of the reef in unison with his deep cadence: 

    He abides—­Taaroa by name—­
    In the immensity of space. 
    There was no earth, there was no heaven,
    There was no sea, there was no mankind. 
    Taaroa calls on high;
    He changes himself fully. 
    Taaroa is the root;
    The rocks (or foundation);
    Taaroa is the sands;
    Taaroa stretches out the branches (is wide-spreading). 
    Taaroa is the light;
    Taaroa is within;
    Taaroa is, ——­
    Taaroa is below;
    Taaroa is enduring;
    Taaroa is wise;
    He created the land of Hawaii;
    Hawaii great and sacred,
    As a crust (or shell) for Taaroa. 
    The earth is dancing (moving). 
    O foundations, O rocks,
    Oh sands! here, here. 
    Brought hither, pressed together the earth;
    Press, press again! 
    They do not ------
    Stretch out the seven heavens; let ignorance cease. 
    Create the heavens, let darkness cease. 
    Let anxiety cease within;
    Let immobility cease;
    Let the period of messengers cease;
    It is the time of the speaker. 
    Fill up the foundation,
    Fill up the rocks,
    Fill up the sands. 
    The heavens are inclosing. 
    And hung up are the heavens
    In the depths. 
    Finished he the world of Hawaii. 
    E pau fenua no Hawaii.

The cart at my request had been driven back to Taravao; so in the morning Tatini and I walked back to the isthmus.  We drank coffee at five, and at three we had covered the twelve miles in the sauntering gait of the Tahitian girl, stopping to make wreaths, and to bathe in several streams.  Butscher was on his table in his after-breakfast lethargy, and I regretted disturbing his iiii to ask him to serve us.  Again Tatini refused to sit at table with me.  Evidently, she feared the scowls of Butscher, who had none of the white’s ideas of the equality of females with males at the board.  Butscher added many francs to my bill by pouring me another bottle of Pol Roger, 1905, which after several days of cocoanut juice took on added delight.  I made up my mind