native themes, and spontaneously and by adaptation he, with others,
gave a trend to the music of Hawaii nei that, though European in the
main, is yet charmingly expressive of the soft, sweet nature of the
Hawaiians and of the contrasts of their delightful gaiety and innate
melancholy. These native tongues of the South Seas, with their many
vowels and short words, seem to be made for singing.

The voyage from Tahiti to Moorea was a two-hours' panorama of
magnificence and anomalism in the architecture of nature. Facing my
goal was Moorea, and behind me Tahiti, scenes of contrary beauty as
the vessel changed the distance from me to them. Tahiti, as I left it,
was under the rays of the already high sun, a shimmering beryl, blue
and yellow hues in the overpowering green mass, and from the loftiest
crags floating a long streamer-cloud, the cloud-banner of Tyndal.

Moorea was the most astonishing sight upon the ocean that my eyes
had ever gazed on. It was as if a mountain of black rock had been
carved by the sons of Uranus, the mighty Titans of old, into gigantic
fortresses, which the lightnings, temblors, and whirlwinds of the
eons had rent into ruins. Its heights were not green like Tahiti's,
but bare and black, true children of the abysmal cataclysm which in
the time of the making of these oases of the sea thrust them up from
the fires of the deep.

Far up near the peak of Afareaitu, nearly a mile above the wave,
in one of the colossal splinters of the basalt rocks, was an eye,
an immense round hole through which the sky shone. One saw it plainly
from Tahiti. It was made by the giant Pai of Tautira when he threw his
spear a dozen miles and pierced a window in the solid granite that all
might know his prowess. One felt like a fool to rehearse to a Tahitian,