saluting with soldierly formality, ’comme c’est jour de fete, je les ai laisse aller a la chasse.’  They were all upon the mountains hunting goats!  Presently we came to the quarters of the women, likewise deserted—­ ‘Ou sont vos bonnes femmes?’ asked the Resident; and the jailer cheerfully responded:  ’Je crois, Monsieur le Resident, qu’elles sont allees quelquepart faire une visite.’  It had been the design of M. Delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities of his small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even he expected anything so perfect as the last.  To complete the picture of convict life in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these criminals draw a salary as regularly as the President of the Republic.  Ten sous a day is their hire.  Thus they have money, food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to write, their liberty.  The French are certainly a good-natured people, and make easy masters.  They are besides inclined to view the Marquesans with an eye of humorous indulgence.  ‘They are dying, poor devils!’ said M. Delaruelle:  ‘the main thing is to let them die in peace.’  And it was not only well said, but I believe expressed the general thought.  Yet there is another element to be considered; for these convicts are not merely useful, they are almost essential to the French existence.  With a people incurably idle, dispirited by what can only be called endemic pestilence, and inflamed with ill-feeling against their new masters, crime and convict labour are a godsend to the Government.

Theft is practically the sole crime.  Originally petty pilferers, the men of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong-boxes.  Hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with that redeeming moderation so common in Polynesian theft, the Marquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing (so to speak) with the proprietor.  If it be Chilian coin—­the island currency—­he will escape; if the sum is in gold, French silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins to come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man.  And now comes the shameful part.  In plain English, the prisoner is tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the money.  To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible.  Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his comrades.  While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention.  He had entered a house about eight in the morning, forced a trunk, and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the horrors of darkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he was reluctantly