Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains.  Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent.  As we approached them we were met by a sturdy Taaoan, bare save for the pareu and handsomely tattooed.  His name, he said, was Strong in Battle, and I, a stranger, must see first of all a tree of wonder that lay in the forest nearby.

Through brush and swamp we searched for it, past scores of ruined paepaes, homes of the long-dead thousands.  We found it at length, a mighty tree felled to the earth and lying half-buried in vine and shrub.

“This tree is older than our people,” said Strong in Battle, mournfully regarding its prostrate length.  “No man ever remembered its beginning.  It was like a house upon a hill, so high and big.  Our forefathers worshipped their gods under it.  The white men cut it to make planks.  That was fifty years ago, but the wood never dies.  There is no wood like it in the Marquesas.  The wise men say that it will endure till the last of our race is gone.”

I felt the end of the great trunk, where the marks of the axe and saw still showed, and struck it with my fist.  The wood did indeed seem hard as iron, though it seemed not to be petrified.  So far as I could ascertain from the fallen trunk, it was of a species I had never seen.

“Twenty years ago I brought a man of Peretane (England) here to see this tree, and he cut off a piece to take away.  No white man has looked on it since that time,” said Strong in Battle.  He brought an axe from a man who was dubbing out a canoe from a breadfruit log, and hacked away a chip for me.

We returned to the village and entered an enclosure in which a group of women were squatting around a popoi bowl.

“What does the Menike seek?” they asked.

“He wants to see the footprint of Hoouiti,” said my guide.

On one of the stones of the paepae was a footprint, perfect from heel to toe, and evidently not artificially made.

“Hoouiti stood here when he hurled his spear across the island,” said Strong in Battle.  “He was not a big man, as you see by his foot’s mark.”

“Fifteen kilometers!  A long hurling of a spear,” said I.

“Aue! he was very strong.  He lived on this paepae.  These whom you see are his children’s children.  Would you like to meet my wife’s father-in-law, Kahuiti?  He has eaten many people.  He talks well.”

Eo! Would I!  I vowed that I would be honored by the acquaintance of any of the relatives of my host, and specially I desired to converse with old, wise men of good taste.

“That man, Kahauiti, has seen life,” said Strong in Battle.  “I am married to the sister of Great Night Moth, who was a very brave and active man, but now foolish.  But Kahauiti!  O!  O!  O!  Ai!  Ai!  Ai!  There he is.”

I never solved the puzzle of my informant’s relation to the man who was his wife’s father-in-law, for suddenly I saw the man himself, and knew that I was meeting a personage.  Kahauiti was on the veranda of a small hut, sitting Turk fashion, and chatting with another old man.  Both of them were striking-looking, but, all in all, I thought Kahauiti the most distinguished man in appearance that I had seen, be it in New York or Cairo, London or Pekin.