my own folk at home ran much in my head in the islands; and not

only inclined me to view my fresh acquaintances with favour, but

continually modified my judgment. A polite Englishman comes to-day

to the Marquesans and is amazed to find the men tattooed; polite

Italians came not long ago to England and found our fathers stained

with woad; and when I paid the return visit as a little boy, I was

highly diverted with the backwardness of Italy: so insecure, so

much a matter of the day and hour, is the pre-eminence of race. It

was so that I hit upon a means of communication which I recommend

to travellers. When I desired any detail of savage custom, or of

superstitious belief, I cast back in the story of my fathers, and

fished for what I wanted with some trait of equal barbarism:

Michael Scott, Lord Derwentwater's head, the second-sight, the

Water Kelpie,--each of these I have found to be a killing bait; the

black bull's head of Stirling procured me the legend of Rahero; and

what I knew of the Cluny Macphersons, or the Appin Stewarts,

enabled me to learn, and helped me to understand, about the Tevas

of Tahiti. The native was no longer ashamed, his sense of kinship

grew warmer, and his lips were opened. It is this sense of kinship

that the traveller must rouse and share; or he had better content

himself with travels from the blue bed to the brown. And the

presence of one Cockney titterer will cause a whole party to walk

in clouds of darkness.

The hamlet of Anaho stands on a margin of flat land between the

west of the beach and the spring of the impending mountains. A

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