The Tahitians did not enter the sea for pleasure.  The rivers and brooks were their bathing- and resting-places.  They attributed sicknesses to the too frequent touch of salt water.  They had not the habitude of swimming within the lagoons, as at Hawaii; it was not with them an exercise or luxury, but a part of their every-day activities in fishing and canoeing.  A farmer after his day’s work does not run foot-races.  Yet in gatherings these people often vied for supremacy in every sort of sea sport, and beforetime, in bays free of coral, developed an astonishing skill in surf-riding on boards, in canoes, and without artificial support.  Such skill was ranked on a par with or perhaps the same as proficiency in the pastimes of war, as did the Greeks, who addressed Diagoras, after he and his two sons had been crowned in the arena:  “Die, for thou hast nothing short of divinity to desire.”  These ambitions had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns of the missionaries, to whom athletics were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell or heaven, with but a brief span to avert their birthright of damnation in sackcloth and ashes.

We entered the river regularly at eleven and four, but Choti, T’yonni, and I also swam in the lagoon at the mouth of the river, and never suffered bad consequences unless we cut or scraped ourselves on coral.  About noon I prepared my dejeuner a la fourchette, and had a wide choice of shrimp, eels, fish, taro, chicken, breadfruit, yams, and all the other fruits.  The solicitude of the homesick missionaries had added to those indigenous, oranges, limes, shaddocks, citrons, tamarinds, guavas, custard apples, peaches, figs, grapes, pineapples, watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and cabbages.  They had grown these foreign flora many years before they made sprout a single shoot of Christianity.

I invented a stove from a five-gallon oil tin.  With a can-opener I cut a strip out on opposite sides ten inches from the bottom, and laid two iron bars across, and under them, inside the receptacle, built a fire.  Upon this I cooked my coffee in the percolator, while upon the earth and hot stones other delicious dishes boiled, stewed, and fried.  If I baked, I used the native oven in the ground, with earth and leaves inclosing.

I passed hours on the reef with Raiere and Matatini or in canoes, drawing the nets and catching shrimp and eels.  In the lagoon we usually secured a plentiful draft of fish, brilliant creatures of silver and crimson, as they leaped from the sea into the nets, and were later tumbled into canoes or on the beach.  The orare, aturi, and paaihere were like the gleaming mesh purses worn by the women of our cities, but the ihi was as red as the beard of the Greek god T’yonni.  These fish we kept in tubs of sea water, alive and even moderately happy until cooked.

Saturday’s parties went far into the woods to gather a choice kind of fei, and the oranges and limes of the foot-hills.  Raiere, Matatini, and another boy, Tahitua, hunted the shrimp and eel.  After our suppers, about seven or eight o’clock, when it was quite dark, we equipped ourselves for the chase, each with a torch and two or three lances, all but Tahitua, who carried a bag.