But why look for a moment at these unfortunates or listen to their dull chants when marvels of nature unfolded at every step!  There was never such luxuriant vegetation, never such a riot of color and richness of growth as on every side.  The wealth of the bougainvillea’s masses of lustrous magenta was matched by the dazzling flamboyant, trees forty feet high, and their foliage a hundred in circumference, a sheen of crimson.  Clumps of bamboo as big as a city lot and towering to the sky, with the yellow allamanda framing the bungalows, and a tangle of bananas, lantana, tafeie, cocoas, and a hundred other fruits, flowers and creepers, made the whole journey through a paradise.

Around many cocoanut-palms were bands of tin or zinc ten or twenty feet from the earth.  These were to foil the rats or crabs which climb the trees and steal (can a creature steal from nature?) the nuts.  Every available piece of thin metal was used for this.  The sheets were often flattened kerosene- and gasoline-cans and were drawn taut and smooth.  These are impasses for the wily climbers.

“Ils ne passeront pas,” said the French; “Aita haere!” the Tahitians.

The road was good, but narrow, in few places room for two to pass except by turning out, skirting the beach at the water’s-edge, crossing causeways over inlets, and in admirable curves clinging to the hillsides, which bathed in the sea.  Moving over a small levee we came to the pointe de Maraa, where was the Grotto of Maraa, a gigantic recess worn in the solid wall of rock, a dark mysterious interior, which gave me a momentary surge of my childhood dread and love of caves and secret entrances to pirates’ lairs.  The diligence halted at the request of M. Brault, and he and I jumped out and ran to the grotto.  In it was a lake with black waters, and down the face of the cliff, which rose hundreds of feet straight, dripped a million drops of the waters of the hills, so that the ground about was in puddles.  The inside walls and arched ceiling were covered with a solid texture of verdant foliage, wet and fragrant.  We found a little canoe fastened to a stone, and adventured on the quiet surface of the pond until at about eighty yards of penetration we came to a blind curtain of stone.

“This grot,” said M. Brault, “was for centuries the retreat of those conquered in war, sacred to gods, and a sanctuary never violated, like those cities of refuge among the Hebrews and Greeks.  Now it is a picnic rendezvous, very dear to Papeete whites and to tourists.  C’est la vie.”

Tahitian women passengers were adorning their heads with wreaths of maiden-hair and rare ferns from the cavern.  Great lianas hung down the walls, and these they climbed to reach the exquisite draperies of the chamber.  The farther we left behind the capital, the more smiling were the faces, the less conventional the actions and gestures of the people.

Papara was at hand, the richest and most famous of all the districts of Tahiti.  The village was a few Chinese stores, a Catholic and a Protestant church, a graveyard, and a scattered collection of homes.  I bade au revoir to my delightful companion, Edmond Brault, having determined to walk the remaining kilometers, and to send on my inconsiderable bag of clothing.