The Marquesan beholds with dismay the approaching extinction of his

race. The thought of death sits down with him to meat, and rises

with him from his bed; he lives and breathes under a shadow of

mortality awful to support; and he is so inured to the apprehension

that he greets the reality with relief. He does not even seek to

support a disappointment; at an affront, at a breach of one of his

fleeting and communistic love-affairs, he seeks an instant refuge

in the grave. Hanging is now the fashion. I heard of three who

had hanged themselves in the west end of Hiva-oa during the first

half of 1888; but though this be a common form of suicide in other

parts of the South Seas, I cannot think it will continue popular in

the Marquesas. Far more suitable to Marquesan sentiment is the old

form of poisoning with the fruit of the eva, which offers to the

native suicide a cruel but deliberate death, and gives time for

those decencies of the last hour, to which he attaches such

remarkable importance. The coffin can thus be at hand, the pigs

killed, the cry of the mourners sounding already through the house;

and then it is, and not before, that the Marquesan is conscious of

achievement, his life all rounded in, his robes (like Caesar's)

adjusted for the final act. Praise not any man till he is dead,

said the ancients; envy not any man till you hear the mourners,

might be the Marquesan parody. The coffin, though of late

introduction, strangely engages their attention. It is to the

mature Marquesan what a watch is to the European schoolboy. For

ten years Queen Vaekehu had dunned the fathers; at last, but the

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