Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Frederick O'Brien

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creations, that even the most selfish of men delight in planting in
new environments exotic seeds and plants, and in enriching the fauna of
faraway islands with strange animals and insects. The pepper- and the
gum-tree that make southern California's desert a bower, the oranges
and lemons there which send a million golden trophies to less-favored
peoples, are the flora of distant climes. Since the days of the white
discoverers, adventurers and priests, fighting men and puritans,
have added to the earth's treasury in Tahiti and all these islands.
Walking one morning along the waterfront, I met two very dark
negresses. They had on pink and black dresses, with red cotton
shawls, and they wore flaming yellow handkerchiefs about their woolly
heads. They were as African as the Congo, and as strange in this
setting as Eskimos on Broadway. They felt their importance, for they
were of the few good cooks of French dishes here. They spoke a French
patois, and guffawed loudly when one dropped her basket of supplies
from her head. They were servants of the procureur de la Republique,
who had brought them from the French colony of Martinique.
Many races have mingled here. One saw their pigments and their lines
in the castes; here a soupcon of the French and there a touch of the
Dane; the Chileno, himself a mestizo, had left his print in delicacy
of feature, and the Irish his freckles and pug, which with tawny
skin, pearly teeth, and the superb form of the pure Tahitian, left
little to be desired in fetching and saucy allurement. Thousands of
sailors and merchants and preachers had sowed their seed here, as did
Captain Cook's men a century and a half ago, and the harvest showed
in numerous shadings of colors and variety of mixtures. Tahiti had,
since ship of Europe sighted Orofena, been a pasture for the wild
asses of the Wanderlust, a paradise into which they had brought their
snakes and left them to plague the natives.
There were phonographs shrieking at one from a score of verandas. The
automobile had become a menace to life and limb. There were two-score
motor-cars in Tahiti; but as the island is small, and most of them
were in the capital, one met them all the day, and might have thought
there were hundreds. Motor-buses, or "rubberneck-wagons," ran about the
city, carrying the natives for a franc on a brief tour, and, for more,
to country districts where good cheer and dances sped the night. A
dozen five- and seven-passenger cars with drivers were for hire. Most
nights until eleven or later the rented machines dashed about the