Nevertheless, as I smoked at ease in my pareu upon the paepae of my simple hosts I felt some misgivings rise in me.  Yet why cavil at the vehicle by which one arrives at Nirvana?  Had I not tasted the chicha beer of the Andes, and found it good?  And vague analogies and surmises floated before me in the curls of smoke that rose in the clear evening light.

What hidden clue to the remotest beginnings of the human race lies in the fact that two peoples, so far apart as the Marquesans and the South American Indians, use the same method of making their native beverage?  In the Andes corn takes the place of the kava root, and young girls, descendants of the ancient Incas, chew the grains, sitting in a circle and with a certain ceremoniousness, as among these Marquesans.  The Marquesas Islands are on the same parallel of latitude as Peru.  Were these two peoples once one race, living on that long-sunken continent in which Darwin believed?

Dusk fell slowly while I pondered on the mysteries in which our life is rooted, and on the unknown beginnings and forgotten significances of all human customs.  The iron-wood trough was filled with the masticated root, and in groups and in couples the girls slipped away to bathe in the river.  There they were met by arriving guests, and the sound of laughter and splashing came up to us as darkness closed upon the paepae and the torches were lit.

Lights were coming out like stars up the dark valley as each household made its vesper fire to roast breadfruit or broil fish, and lanterns were hung upon the bamboo palisades that marked the limits of property or confined favorite pigs.  A cool breeze rose and rustled the fronds of cocoanut and bamboo, bringing from forest depths a clean, earthy odor.

The last bather came from the brook, refreshed by the cooling waters and adorned with flowers.  All were in a merry mood for food and fun.  Half a dozen flaring torches illuminated their happy, tattooed faces and dusky bodies, and caught color from the vivid blossoms in their hair.  The ring of light made blacker the rustling cocoanut grove, the lofty trees of which closed in upon us on every side.

Under the gaze of many sparkling eyes Kivi pierced green cocoanuts brought him fresh from the climbing, and poured the cool wine of them over the masticated kava.  He mixed it thoroughly and then with his hands formed balls of the oozy mass, from which he squeezed the juice into another tanoa glazed a deep, rich blue by its frequent saturation in kava.  When this trough was quite full of a muddy liquid, he deftly clarified it by sweeping through it a net of cocoanut fiber.  All the while he chanted in a deep resonant voice the ancient song of the ceremony.

“U haanoho ia te kai, a tapapa ia te kai!” he called with solemnity when the last rite was performed.  “Come to supper; all is ready.”

“Menike,” he said to me, “You know that to drink kava you must be of empty stomach.  After eating, kava will make you sick.  If you do not eat as soon as you have drunk it, you will not enjoy it.  Take it now, and then eat, quickly.”