In the Marquesas all the rivers
begin in the high mountains, where from the precipices leap the
torrents in times of rain. As the valleys are mere ravines at their
heads, the waters collect in their depths and roll to the ocean,
rippling gently on sunny days, but after a downpour raging, rolling
huge boulders over and over and tearing away cliffs.

These streams are the life of the people in the upper valleys. In
the old days of warfare many of these mountain dwellers never knew
the sea; they were prevented from reaching it by the beach clansmen
who claimed the fishing for their own and made it death for the hill
people to venture down to the shore. All the people of a single
valley, six or perhaps a dozen clans, united to war against other
valleys, its people risking their lives if they trespassed beyond
the hills. Yet under a wise and powerful chief a whole valley lived
in amity and knew no class or clan divisions.

"We are going to _Vaihae_, The Waters of the Great Desire," said
Malicious Gossip. "It was a sacred place once upon a time."

We climbed painfully, Le Moine and I suffering keenly from the sharp
edges of the stones that cut even through the thick soles of our
shoes. The others, who were barefooted, made nothing of them,
walking as easily and lithely as panthers on the jagged trail.
Soon we heard the crash of the _Vaihae_, and sliding down the
mountain-side a hundred feet we came into a depths of a gorge a yard
or two wide, a mere crack in the rocks, filled with the boom and
roar of rushing water. The rain-swollen stream, cramped in the
narrow passage, flung itself foaming high on the spray-wet cliffs,
and dashed in a mighty torrent into a deep howl riven out of the
solid granite twenty feet below.

We put off our clothes and leaped into the pool, enjoying intensely
the coolness of the swirling water after the sweat of our climb.
Malicious Gossip and her sister would not go in at first, but when I
had climbed the face of a slippery rock twenty feet high to dive,
and remained there gazing at the melancholy grandeur of the scene,
Malicious Gossip put off her tunic and swam through the race,
bringing me my camera untouched by the water. She was a naiad of the
old mythologies as she slipped through the green current, her hair
streaming over her shoulders and her body moving effortlessly as a
fish. Once wetted, she remained in the water with us, and she told
me there was a cave behind the waterfall, hidden