liffy lining sinks, at both
sides, into a beach. A copra warehouse stands in the shadow of the
shoreside trees, flitted about for ever by a clan of dwarfish swallows;
and a line of rails on a high wooden staging bends back into the mouth
of the valley. Walking on this, the new-landed traveller becomes aware
of a broad fresh-water lagoon (one arm of which he crosses), and beyond,
of a grove of noble palms, sheltering the house of the trader, Mr.
Keane. Overhead, the cocos join in a continuous and lofty roof;
blackbirds are heard lustily singing; the island cock springs his
jubilant rattle and airs his golden plumage; cow-bells sound far and
near in the grove; and when you sit in the broad verandah, lulled by
this symphony, you may say to yourself, if you are able: "Better fifty
years of Europe..." Farther on, the floor of the valley is flat and
green, and dotted here and there with stripling coco-palms. Through the
midst, with many changes of music, the river trots and brawls; and along
its course, where we should look for willows, puraos grow in clusters,
and make shadowy pools after an angler's heart. A vale more rich and
peaceful, sweeter air, a sweeter voice of rural sounds, I have found
nowhere. One circumstance alone might strike the experienced: here is a
convenient beach, deep soil, good water, and yet nowhere any paepaes,
nowhere any trace of island habitation.

It is but a few years since this valley was a place choked with jungle,
the debatable land and battle-ground of cannibals. Two clans laid claim
to it--neither could substantiate the claim, and the roads lay desert,
or were only visited by men in arms. It is for this very reason that it
wears now so smiling an appearance: cleared, planted, built upon,
supplied with railways, boat-houses, and bath-houses. For, being no
man's land, it was the more readily ceded to a stranger. The stranger
was Captain John Hart: Ima Hati, "Broken-arm," the natives call him,
because when he first visited the islands his arm was in a sling.
Captain Hart, a man of English birth but an American subject, had
conceived the idea of cotton culture in the Marquesas during the
American War, and was at first rewarded with success. His plantation at
Anaho was highly productive; island cotton fetched a high price, and the
natives used to debate which was the stronger power, Ima Hati or the
French: deciding in favour of the captain, because, though the French
had the most ships, he had th