I was met by a stalwart and handsome savage, in earrings and necklace and scarlet pareu, who rubbed my nose with his and smelled me ceremoniously, welcoming me as an honored guest.  Several women followed his example, while naked children ran forward curiously to look at the stranger.

Learning the interest and admiration I felt for his house, my host displayed it with ill-concealed pride.  Its frame was of the largest-sized bamboos standing upright, and faced with hibiscus strips, all lashed handsomely and strongly with faufee cordage.  Upon this framework were set the walls, constructed of canes arranged in a delicate pattern, the fastenings being of purau or other rattan-like creepers, all tied neatly and regularly.  As the residence was only about a dozen feet deep, through three times that length, these walls were not only attractive but eminently serviceable, the canes shading the interior, and the interstices between them admitting ample light and air.

We entered through a low opening and found the one long chamber spacious, cool, and perfumed with the forest odors.  There were no furnishings save two large and brilliantly polished cocoanut-tree trunks running the whole length of the interior, and between them piles of mats of many designs and of every bright hue that roots and herbs will yield.

While I admired these, noting their rich colors and soft, yet firm, texture, a murmurous rustle on the palm-thatched roof announced the coming of the rain.  It was unthinkable to my host that a stranger should leave his house at nightfall, and in a downpour that might become a deluge before morning.  To have refused his invitation had been to leave a pained and bewildered household.

Popoi bowls and wooden platters of the roasted breadfruit were brought within shelter, and while the hissing rain put out the fires on the paepae the candlenuts were lighted and all squatted for the evening meal.  Breadfruit and yams, with a draught of cocoanut milk, satisfied the hunger created by my arduous climb.  Then the women carried away the empty bowls while my host and I lay upon the mats and smoked, watching the gray slant of the rain through the darkening twilight.

Few houses like his remained on Hiva-Oe, he said in reply to my compliments.  The people loved the ways of the whites and longed for homes of redwood planks and roofs of iron.  For himself, he loved the ways of his fathers, and though yielding as he must to the payments of taxes and the authority of new laws, he would not toil in the copra-groves or work on traders’ ships.  His father had been a warrior of renown.  The u’u was wielded no more, being replaced by the guns of the whites.  The old songs were forgotten.  But he, who had traveled far, who had seen the capital of the world, Tahiti, and had learned much of the ways of the foreigner, would have none of them.  He would live as his fathers had lived, and die as they had died.