forty thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death.  This horrid traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident.  It was Captain Hart who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it, at a time when his plantations flourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keeping Chinese coolies.  To-day the plantations are practically deserted and the Chinese gone; but in the meanwhile the natives have learned the vice, the patent brings in a round sum, and the needy Government at Papeete shut their eyes and open their pockets.  Of course, the patentee is supposed to sell to Chinamen alone; equally of course, no one could afford to pay forty thousand francs for the privilege of supplying a scattered handful of Chinese; and every one knows the truth, and all are ashamed of it.  French officials shake their heads when opium is mentioned; and the agents of the farmer blush for their employment.  Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones; as a subject of the British crown, I am an unwilling shareholder in the largest opium business under heaven.  But the British case is highly complicated; it implies the livelihood of millions; and must be reformed, when it can be reformed at all, with prudence.  This French business, on the other hand, is a nostrum and a mere excrescence.  No native industry was to be encouraged:  the poison is solemnly imported.  No native habit was to be considered:  the vice has been gratuitously introduced.  And no creature profits, save the Government at Papeete—­the not very enviable gentlemen who pay them, and the Chinese underlings who do the dirty work.

CHAPTER IX—­THE HOUSE OF TEMOANA

The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by the coming and going of the French.  At least twice they have seized the archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the meanwhile the natives pursued almost without interruption their desultory cannibal wars.  Through these events and changing dynasties, a single considerable figure may be seen to move:  that of the high chief, a king, Temoana.  Odds and ends of his history came to my ears:  how he was at first a convert to the Protestant mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land, served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, in English seaports; how he returned at last to the Marquesas, fell under the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extended his influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with the prelate, and died at last the chief supporter of Catholicism and the French.  His widow remains in receipt of two pounds a month from the French Government.  Queen she is usually called, but in the official almanac she figures as ’Madame Vaekehu, Grande Chefesse.’  His son (natural or adoptive, I know not which), Stanislao Moanatini, chief of Akaui, serves in Tai-o-hae as a kind of Minister of Public Works; and the daughter