the English and French in Tahiti. A slight opposition cropped out
often in criticism expressed to Americans or to Tahitians, or to
each other's own people. New Zealand governs the Cook group, of which
Raratonga is the principal island. Comparisons of sanitation, order,
neatness, and businesslike management of these islands, with the
happy-go-lucky administration of the Society, Paumotus, Marquesas,
and Austral archipelagoes, owned by the French, were frequent by the
English. The French shrugged their shoulders.

"The Tahitians are happy, and we send millions of francs to aid
France," they said. "The English talk always of neatness and golf links
and cricket-grounds. Eh bien! There are other and better things. And
as for drink, oh, la, la! Our sour wines could not fight one round
of the English boxe with whisky and gin and that awful ale."

The French residents protested at the missiles of the crew and the
laissez-faire of the Noa-Noa officers, and the British consul received
a letter from the governor in which the affair of the riot was revived
in an absurd manner.

One might understand M. Lontane, second in command of the police
forces,--six men and himself,--magnifying the row between the tipsy
stokers and his battalions, but to have the governor, who was a
first-rate hand at bridge, and even knew the difference between a
straight and a flush, putting down in black and white, sealed with
the seal of the Republique Française, and signed with his own hand,
that "France had been insulted by the actions of the savages of the
Noa-Noa," was worthy only of the knight of La Mancha.

So thought the consul, but he was a diplomat, his adroitness gained