CHAPTER XXXIX. The Chants of Departure; Night Falls on the Land of the War Fleet

The chants of departure; night falls on the Land of the War Fleet

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Village of Atuona, showing peak of Temetiu

Beach at Viataphiha-Tahiti

Where the belles of Tahiti lived in the shade to whiten their complexions

Lieutenant L'Hermier des Plantes, Governor of the Marquesas Islands

Entrance to a Marquesan Bay

The ironbound coast of the Marquesas

A road in Nuka-Hiva

Harbor of Tai-o-hae

Schooner Fetia Taiao in the Bay of Traitors

André Bauda, Commissaire

The public dance in the garden

Antoinette, a Marquesan dancing girl

Marquesans in Sunday clothes

Vai Etienne

The pool by the Queen's house

Idling away the sunny hours

Nothing to do but rest all day

Catholic Church at Atuona

A native spearing fish from a rock

A volunteer cocoanut grove, with trees of all ages

Climbing for cocoanuts

Splitting cocoanut husks in copra making process

Cutting the meat from cocoanuts to make copra

A Marquesan home on a paepae

Isle of Barking Dogs

The haka, the Marquesan national dance

Hot Tears with Vai Etienne

The old cannibal of Taipi Valley

Enacting a human sacrifice of the Marquesans

Interior of Island of Fatu-hiva, where the author walked over the mountains

The plateau of Ahoa

Kivi, the kava drinker with the hetairae of the valley

A pool in the jungle

The Pekia, or Place of Sacrifice, at Atuona

Marquesan cannibals, wearing dress of human hair

Tepu, a Marquesan girl of the hills, and her sister

A tattooed Marquesan with carved canoe paddle

A chieftess in tapa garments with tapa parasol

Launching the whale-boat

Père Simeon Delmas' church at Tai-o-hae

Gathering the feis in the mountains

Near the Mission at Hanavave

Starting from Hanavave for Oomoa

Feis, or mountain bananas

Where river and bay meet at Oomoa, Island of Fatu-hiva

Sacred banyan tree at Oomoa

Elephantiasis of the legs

Removing the pig cooked in the umu, or native oven

The Koina Kai, or feast in Oomoa

Beach at Oomoa

Putting the canoe in the water

Pascual, the giant Paumotan pilot and his friends

A pearl diver's sweetheart

Spearing fish in Marquesas Islands

Pearl shell divers at work

Catholic Church at Hanavave

A canoe in the surf at Oomoa

The gates of the Valley of Hanavave

A fisherman's house of bamboo and cocoanut leaves

Double canoes

Harbor sports

Tahaiupehe, Daughter of the Pigeon, of Taaoa

Nataro Puelleray and wife

Author's Note. Foreign words in a book are like rocks in a path. There are two ways of meeting the difficulty; the reader may leap over them, or use them as stepping stones. I have written this book so that they may easily be leaped over by the hasty, but he will lose much enjoyment by doing so; I would urge him to pronounce them as he goes. Marquesan words have a flavor all their own; much of the simple poetry of the islands is in them. The rules for pronouncing them are simple; consonants have the sounds usual in English, vowels have the Latin value, that is, a is ah, e is ay, i is ee, o is oh, and u is oo. Every letter is pronounced, and there are no accents. The Marquesans had no written language, and their spoken tongue was reproduced as simply as possible by the missionaries.

WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS