_taro_-patch
guitar, and sang his repertoire of ballads of Hawaii--"Aloha Oe,"
"Hawaii Ponoi," and "One, Two, Three, Four." Urged by all, I gave
them for the last time my vocal masterpiece, "All Night Long He
Calls Her Snooky-Ukums!" and was rewarded by a clamor of applauding
cries. Marquesans think our singing strange--and no wonder! Theirs
is a prolonged chant, a monotone without tune, with no high notes
and little variance. But loving distraction, they listened with deep
amusement to my rendering of American airs, as we might listen to
Chinese falsettos.

They repaid me by reciting legends of their clans, and Titihuti
chanted her genealogy, a record kept by memory in all families. Water,
her son, who had learned to write, set it down on paper for me. It
named the ancestors in pairs, father and mother, and Titihuti
remembered thirty-eight generations, which covered perhaps a
thousand years.

We sat in a respectful circle about her while she chanted it. An
Amazon in height and weight, nearly six feet tall, body and head
cast in heroic mold, she stood erect, her scarlet tunic gathered to
display her symmetrical legs, tattooed in thought-kindling patterns,
the feet and ankles as if encased in elegant Oriental sandals. Her
red-gold hair, a flame in the flickering light of the torches, was
wreathed with bright-green, glossy leaves, necklaces of peppers and
small colored nuts rose and fell with her deep breathing.

Her voice was melodious, pitched low, and vibrating with the
peculiar tone of the chant, a tone impossible of imitation to one
who has not learned it as a child. Her eyes were kindled with pride
of ancestry as she called the roll of experiences and achievements
of the line that had bred her, and her clear-cut Greek features
mirrored every emotion she felt, emotions of glory and pride, of
sorrow and abasement at the fall of her race, of stoic fortitude in
the dull present and hopeless future of her people. With one shapely
arm upraised, she uttered the names, trumpet-calls to memory and
imagination:

Enata (Men) Vehine (Women)
Na tupa efitu Metui te vehine
Tupa oa ia fai Puha Momoo
O tupa haaituani O haiko
O nuku Oui aei
O hutu Moeakau
O oko Oinu vaa
O moota O niniauo
O tiu Moafitu otemau
Fekei O mauniua
O tuoa Hotaei
O meae Oa