I had journeyed forth out of that comfortable
zone of kindred languages, where the curse of Babel is so easy to be
remedied; and my new fellow-creatures sat before me dumb like images.
Methought, in my travels, all human relation was to be excluded; and
when I returned home (for in those days I still projected my return) I
should have but dipped into a picture-book without a text. Nay, and I
even questioned if my travels should be much prolonged; perhaps they
were destined to a speedy end; perhaps my subsequent friend, Kauanui,
whom I remarked there, sitting silent with the rest, for a man of some
authority, might leap from his hams with an ear-splitting signal, the
ship be carried at a rush, and the ship's company butchered for the
table.

There could be nothing more natural than these apprehensions, nor
anything more groundless. In my experience of the islands, I had never
again so menacing a reception; were I to meet with such to-day, I should
be more alarmed and tenfold more surprised. The majority of Polynesians
are easy folk to get in touch with, frank, fond of notice, greedy of the
least affection, like amiable, fawning dogs; and even with the
Marquesans, so recently and so imperfectly redeemed from a
blood-boltered barbarism, all were to become our intimates, and one, at
least, was to mourn sincerely our departure.

CHAPTER II

MAKING FRIENDS

The impediment of tongues was one that I particularly over-estimated.
The languages of Polynesia are easy to smatter, though hard to speak
with elegance. And they are extremely similar, so that a person who has
a tincture of one or two may risk, not without hope, an attempt upon the
others.

And again, not only is Polynesian easy to smatter, but interpreters
abound. Missionaries, traders, and broken white folk living on the
bounty of the natives, are to be found in almost every isle and hamlet;
and even where these are unserviceable, the natives themselves have
often scraped up a little English, and in the French zone (though far
less commonly) a little French-English, or an efficient pidgin, what is
called to the westward "Beach-la-Mar," comes easy to the Polynesian; it
is now taught, besides, in the schools of Hawaii; and from the
multiplicity of British ships, and the nearness of the States on the one
hand and the colonies on the other, it may be called, and will almost
certainly become, the tongue of the Pacific.

I will instance a few examples. I met i