“Do we go near her home?” said I.

“No; we see no more paepaes,” replied Orivie.

“Then,” I said, “let us hasten onward.”

We mounted at every foot, and soon were above the cocoanuts.  The trail was a stream interspersed with rocks, for in these steep accents the path, worn lower than its borders, becomes in the rainy season the natural bed of the trickle or torrent that runs to the valley.  The horse leaped from rock to rock, planting his back feet and springing upward to a perch, upon which he hung until he got balance for another leap.  I followed the animal, knowing him wiser in such matters than I. From time to time Orivie urged me to ride and when I refused gave me the knowing look bestowed upon the witless, the glance of the asylum-keeper upon the lunatic who thinks himself a billiard ball.

We were soon so high that I saw below only a big basin, in which was a natural temple, the vast ruin of a gigantic minster, it seemed, and across the basin a rugged, saw-like profile of the mountain-top.  Eons ago the upper valley was a volcano, when the island of Fatu-hiva was under the sea.  Once the fire burst through the crater side toward the present beach, and after the explosion there was left a massive gateway of rock, through which we had come from the village.  Towering so high that they were hardly perceptible when we had been beside them, they showed from this height their whole formation, like the wrecked walls of a stupendous basilica.

Up and up we went.  The way was steeper than any mountain I have ever climbed, except the sheer sides of chasms where ropes are necessary, or the chimneys of narrow defiles.  I have climbed on foot Vesuvius, Halaakela, Kilauea, Fuji, and Mayon, and the mountains of America, Asia, and South America, though I know nothing by trial of the terrors of the Alps.  However, the horse could and did go up the steep, though it taxed him to the utmost, and these horses are like mountain-goats, for there is hardly any level land in the Marquesas.

[Illustration:  Catholic Church at Hanavave Frere Fesal on left, Pere Olivier on right]

[Illustration:  A canoe in the surf at Oomoa]

Unexpectedly, the sea came in view, with the Catholic church and its white belfry, but in another turn it disappeared.  I fell again and again; the horse floundered among the stones in the trough and fell, too, Orivie seizing trees or bushes that lined the banks to save himself.  Rocks as large as hundred-ton vessels were on the mountainside above, held from falling only by small rocks interposed, feeble obstacles to an avalanche.  Beetling precipices overhung the village.  I thought they might fall at any moment, and the Marquesans recount many such happenings.  In Tai-o-hae three hundred natives were entombed forever by a landslide, and Orivie pointed out the tracks of such slides, and immense masses of rock in the far depths below, beside strips of soft soil brought down by the rains.