She sat on the mat beside me, and pressed my hand.  I had been adopted as her son, and she was sorry to see me departing to the unknown island from which I had come, and from which, she knew, I would never return.  She was mournful; she said that her heart was heavy.  But I praised lavishly her beautifully tattooed legs, and complimented the decoration of her hair until she smiled again, and when from the shadowy edges of the ring of torch-light voices began an old chant of feasting, she took it up with the others.

There were Marquesans who could recite one hundred and forty-five generations of their families, covering more than thirty-six hundred years.  Enough to make family trees that go back to the Norman conquest appear insignificant.  I had known an old Maori priest who traced his ancestry to Rangi and Papa, through one hundred and eighty-two generations, 4,550 years.  The Easter Islanders spoke of fifty-seven generations, and in Raratonga ninety pairs of ancestors are recited.  The pride of the white man melts before such records.

Such incidents as the sack of Jerusalem, the Crusades, or Cassar’s assassination, are recent events compared to the beginnings of some of these families, whose last descendants have died or are dying to-day.

I took Titihuti’s words with me as I went down the trail from my little blue cabin at the foot of Temetiu for the last time:  “We come, we do not know whence, and we go, we do not know where.  Only the sea endures, and it does not remember.”

Great Fern, Haabuani, Exploding Eggs, and Water carried my bags and boxes to the shore, while I said adieux to the governor, Bauda, and Le Brunnec.  When I reached the beach all the people of the valley were gathered there.  They sat upon the sand, men and women and children, and intoned my farewell ode—­my pae me io te: 

  “Apae! 
   Kaoha! te Menike! 
   Mau oti oe anao nei
       i te apua Kahito”
       o a’Tahiti. 
   Ei e tihe to metao iau e hoa iriti oei an ote vei mata to taua. 
       E avei atu.”

  “O, farewell to you, American! 
   You go to far-distant Tahiti! 
   There you will stay, but you will weep for me. 
   Ever I shall be here, and the tears fall like the river flows. 
   O friend and lover, the time has come.  Farewell!”

The sky was ominous and the boats of the Saint Francois were running a heavy surf.  I waded waist-deep through the breakers to climb into one.  Malicious Gossip, Ghost Girl and the little leper lass, Many Daughters, were sobbing, their dresses lifted to their eyes.

“Hee poihoo!” cried the steersman.  The men in the breakers shoved hard, and leaped in, and we were gone.

My last hour in the Marquesas had come.  I should never return.  The beauty, the depressingness of these islands is overwhelming.  Why could not this idyllic, fierce, laughter-loving people have stayed savage and strong, wicked and clean?  The artists alone have known the flower destroyed here, the possible growth into greatness and purity that was choked in the smoke of white lust and greed.