Tahiapii smoking Kekela's pipe.

[Illustration: Interior of Island of Fatu-hiva, where the author
walked over the mountains]

[Illustration: The plateau of Ahoa]

CHAPTER XVIII

A search for rubber-trees on the plateau of Ahoa; a fight with the
wild white dogs; story of an ancient migration, told by the wild
cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman.

I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, in search of
rubber trees on the plateau of Ahao, above Hanamenu, on the other
side of Hiva-oa Island.

Mounted on small, but sturdy, mountain ponies, we followed the trail
across the river and up the steep mountain-side clad with
impenetrable jungle, climbing ever higher and higher above deep
gorges and dizzying precipices, until at noon we crossed the
loftiest range and dipped downward to the wide plateau.

A thousand feet above the valley, level as a prairie, and
indescribably wild and deserted, the plain stretched before us. At
some distance to our right a long and narrow mound rose five hundred
feet from the plateau, a hill that did not mar the vast level expanse,
but seemed instead a great earthwork piled upon it by man. Its green
terrace was a wild garden of flowers and fruit growing in luxuriant
confusion, watered by a stream that leaped sparkling among tall ferns.

There was no breadfruit, for it will live only where man is there to
tend it, and in all the extent of the tableland there was no human
being or sign of habitation. Wild cattle and boars moved in droves
among the scattered trees, or stood in the shallow stream watching us
with curiosity as we passed. Thousands of guinea-pigs scampered
before our horses' feet, and the free descendants of house-trained
cats from the cities of Europe and America perched upon lofty
branches to gaze down at our cavalcade.

I have seen the Garden of Allah, and the Garden of Eden,--if I can
believe the Arab sheik whose camel I bought for the journey,--I have
been in Nikko at its best, and known Johore and Kandy _en fete_, but
for the hours in which I looked upon it this plateau of Ahao was the
most exquisite spot upon the earth. The wilderness of its tropic
beauty, the green of its leafage, the rich profusion and splendor of
its flowers, the pale colors that shimmered along its far horizon,
and the desolate grandeur of Temetiu's distant summit wrapped in
thunderous clouds, gave it an aspect primitive, mysterious, and
sublime.

Upon the tree