ind. It was invention
for tourists. The Tahitian wears flowers anywhere, always, if he can
have them, and they do express his mood. If he is sad, he will not put
them on; but if going to a dance, to a picnic, or to promenade, if he
has money in his pocket, or gaiety in his heart, he must bloom. Over
one ear, or both, in the hair, on the head, around the neck, both sexes
were passionately fond of this age-old sign of kinship with nature. The
lei in Hawaii around the hat or the neck spells the same meaning, but
the flood of outsiders has lost Hawaii all but the merest remnant of
its ancient ways, while here still persisted customs which a century
of European difference and indifference has not crushed out. Here,
as there, more lasting wreaths for the hat were woven of shells or
beads in various colors.

As I strolled past the houses, every one greeted me pleasantly.

"Ia ora na," they said, or "Bonjour!" I replied in kind. I had not
been a day in Tahiti before I felt kindled in me an affection for
its dark people which I had never known for any other race. It was
an admixture of friendship, admiration, and pity--of affection for
their beautiful natures, of appreciation of the magnificence of their
physical equipment, and of sympathy for them in their decline and
inevitable passing under the changed conditions of environment made
by the sudden smothering of their instinctive needs in the sepia of
commercial civilization. I saw that those natives remaining, laughing
and full of the desire for pleasure as they were, must perish because
unfit to survive in the morass of modernism in which they were sinking,
victims of a system of life in which material profits were the sole
goal and standard of the rulers.

The Tahitians are tall, vigorous, and superbly rounded. The men,
often more than six feet or even six and a half feet in height, have
a mien of natural majesty and bodily grace. They convey an impression
of giant strength, reserve power, and unconscious poise beyond that
made by any other race. American Indians I have known had much of this
quality when resident far from towns, but they lacked the curving,
padded muscles, the ease of movement, and, most of all, the smiling
faces, the ingratiating manner, of these children of the sun.

The Tahitians' noses are fairly flat and large; the nostrils dilated;
their lips full and sensual; their teeth perfectly shaped and very
white and sound; their chins strong, though round;