They looked happy in the sunshine, the smoke curling about them in
milky wreaths, the men naked except for pareus, and the children
quite as born. Fragrance of the Jasmine answered all with pleasant
badinage, and each must know whither we were bound. They thought it
not at all odd, apparently, that a princess of their race should be
going to the waterfalls with a foreigner, and they beamed on me to
assure me of their interest and understanding.

The broad avenue lessened into a broken road, roofed by many kinds
of trees. Though the sun ascended from the ocean on the other side of
Tahiti above the fantastic peak of Maiauo, it had not shed a beam upon
the ferns and mosses. The guava was a dense growth. Like the lantana
of Hawaii and Ceylon, imported to Tahiti to fill a want, it had abused
hospitality, and become a nuisance without apparent remedy. How often
man works but in circles! Everywhere in the world plants and insects,
birds and animals, had been pointed out to me that had been acquired
for a beneficent purpose, and had become a curse.

The mina-bird was brought to Tahiti from the Moluccas to eat wasps
which came from South America, and were called Jack Spaniards. The
mina, perhaps, ate the insects, but he also ate everything else,
including fruit. He stole bread and butter off tables, and his hoarse
croak or defiant rattle was an oft-repeated warning to defend one's
food. The minas were many in Tahiti, and, like the English sparrow
in American cities and towns, had driven almost all other birds to
flight or local extinction. The sparrow's urban doom might be read
in the increasing number of automobiles, but the mina in Tahiti,
as in Hawaii, had a sinecure.