windjammer--Middle of the voyage--Tahiti on the horizon--Ashore
in Papeete.

What did Tahiti hold for me? I thought vaguely of its history. The
world first knew its existence only about the time that the American
colonies were trying to separate themselves from Great Britain. An
English naval captain happened on the island, and thought himself the
first white man there, though the Spanish claim its discovery. The
Englishman called it King George Island, after the noted Tory monarch
of his day; but a Frenchman, a captain and poet, the very next spring
named it the New Cytherea, esteeming its fascinations like the fabled
island of ancient Greek lore. It remained for Captain James Cook,
who, before steam had killed the wonder of distance and the telegraph
made daily bread of adventure and discovery, was the hero of many a
fireside tale, to bring Tahiti vividly before the mind of the English
world. That hardy mariner's entrancing diary fixed Tahiti firmly in
the thoughts of the British and Americans. Bougainville painted such
an ecstatic picture that all France would emigrate. Cook set down
that Otaheite was the most beautiful of all spots on the surface of
the globe. He praised the people as the handsomest and most lovable
of humans, and said they wept when he sailed. That was to him of
inestimable value in appraising them.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century the first English
missionaries in the South Seas thanked God for a safe passage from
their homes to Tahiti, and for a virgin soil and an affrightingly
wicked people to labor with. The English, however, did not seize the
island, but left it for the French to do that, who first declared it
a protectorate, and made it a colony of France, in the unjust way of
the mighty, before the last king died. They had come ten thousand miles