hem, giving justice and
injustice to litigants, despatching all the concomitants of modernity
to littler islands. Papeete is the entrepot of all the archipelagoes
in these seas.

The French, who have domination in these waters of a hundred islands
and atolls between 8 and 27 south latitude, and between 137 and 154
west longitude, a stretch of about twelve hundred miles each way,
make them all tributary to Papeete; and thus it is the metropolis
of a province of salt water, over which come its couriers and its
freighters, its governors and its soldiers, its pleasure-seekers and
its idlers. From it an age ago went the Maoris to people Hawaii and
New Zealand.

Papeete has a central position in the Pacific. The capitals of Hawaii,
Australia, New Zealand, and California are from two and a half to
three and a half thousand miles away. No other such group of whites,
or place approaching its urbanity, is to be found in a vast extent
of latitude or longitude. It is without peer or competitor in endless
leagues of waves.

Yet Papeete is a little place, a mile or so in length and less in
width, a curious imposition of European houses and manners upon a
Tahitian hamlet, hybrid, a mixture of loveliness and ugliness, of
nature savage and tamed. The settlement, as with all ports, began at
the waterfront, and the harbor of Papeete is a lake within the milky
reef, the gentle waters of which touch a strip of green that runs
along the shore, broken here and there by a wall and by the quay at
which I landed. Coral blocks have been quarried from the reef and
fitted to make an embankment for half a mile, which juts out just
far enough to be usable as a mole. It is alongside this that sailing
vessels lie, the wharf being the only land mooring with a roof for
the housing of products. A dozen schooners, small and large, point
their noses out to the sea, their backs against the coral quay, and
their hawsers made fast to old cannon, brought here to war against
the natives, and now binding the messengers of the nations and of
commerce to this shore. Where there are no embankments, the water
comes up to the roots of the trees, and a carpet of grass, moss,
and tropical vegetation grows from the salt tide to the roadway.

Following the contour of the beach, runs a fairly broad road, and
facing this original thoroughfare and the sea are the principal
shops of the traders and a few residences. French are some of
these merchants, but most are Austr