has lived. Now, with such a man, falling and taking root among

islanders, the processes described may be compared to a gardener's

graft. He passes bodily into the native stock; ceases wholly to be

alien; has entered the commune of the blood, shares the prosperity

and consideration of his new family, and is expected to impart with

the same generosity the fruits of his European skill and knowledge.

It is this implied engagement that so frequently offends the

ingrafted white. To snatch an immediate advantage--to get (let us

say) a station for his store--he will play upon the native custom

and become a son or a brother for the day, promising himself to

cast down the ladder by which he shall have ascended, and repudiate

the kinship so soon as it shall grow burdensome. And he finds

there are two parties to the bargain. Perhaps his Polynesian

relative is simple, and conceived the blood-bond literally; perhaps

he is shrewd, and himself entered the covenant with a view to gain.

And either way the store is ravaged, the house littered with lazy

natives; and the richer the man grows, the more numerous, the more

idle, and the more affectionate he finds his native relatives.

Most men thus circumstanced contrive to buy or brutally manage to

enforce their independence; but many vegetate without hope,

strangled by parasites.

We had no cause to blush with Brother Michel. Our new parents were

kind, gentle, well-mannered, and generous in gifts; the wife was a

most motherly woman, the husband a man who stood justly high with

his employers. Enough has been said to show why Moipu should be

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