had fled to Moorea after a desperate struggle with opposing clans,
and he welcomed the preachers as additions to his strength. The high
priest of the district, Patii, collected all the gods under his care,
and they were burned, with a Bible in sight, to the exceeding fear of
the native heathen, and the holy anger of the other native clergy,
who felt as Moses did when he saw his disciples worshiping a golden
calf. On the very spot I stood had been the marae, or Tahitian temple,
in which the images were housed, now a rude heap of stones. A hundred
years ago exactly this exchange of deities had been made. Alas! it
could not have been the true Christ who was brought to them, for they
had flourished mightily under Oro, and they began almost at once to
die. Not peace, but a sword, a sword of horrors, of frightful ills,
was brought them.

There was a little canoe under a noble cocoanut-tree on the
shell-strewn and crab-haunted coral beach, the roots of the palm
partly covered by the salt water, and partly by a tangle of lilac
marine convolvulus. I pushed the tiny craft into the brine, and
paddled off on the still water of the shining lagoon.

No faintest agitation of the surface withheld a clear view of the
marvelous growths upon the bottom. I peered into a garden of white
and vari-colored flowers of stone, of fans and vases and grotesque
shapes, huge sponges and waving bushes and stunted trees. Fish of
a score of shapes and of all colors of the spectrum wove in and out
the branches and caverns of this wondrous parterre.

Past the creamy reef the purple ocean glittered in the nooning sun,
while the motionless waters of the lagoon were turquoise and bice near
by and virescent in the distance. Looking toward the shore, the edge