had set out to be formal, but, like most efforts at taming the fierce
fecundity of nature in these seas, had become a tangle of verdure,
for though now and then combed into some regularity, the breezes,
the dogs, the chickens, and the invading people ruffled it, the
falling leaves covered the grass, and the dead branches sighed for
burial. Down the narrow path she went ponderously, showing me the
cannas, jasmine and rose, picking a lime or a tamarind, a bouquet of
mock-orange flowers, smoothing the tuberoses, the hibiscus of many
colors, the oleanders, maile ilima, Star of Bethlehem, frangipani,
and, her greatest love, the tiare Tahiti. There were snakeplants,
East-India cherries, coffee-bushes, custard-apples, and the hinano,
the sweetness of which and of the tiare made heavy the air.

I said that we had no flower in America as wonderful in perfume
as these.

Lovaina stopped her slow, heavy steps. She raised her beautiful,
big hand, and arresting my attention, she exclaimed:

"You know that ol' hinano! Ol' time we use that Tahiti cologne. Girl
put that on pareu an' on dress, by an' by make whole body jus' like
flower. That set man crazee; make all man want kiss an' hug."

Doubtless, our foremothers when they sought to win the hunters of their
tribes, took the musk, the civet, and the castor from the prey laid at
their feet, and made maddening their smoke- and wind-tanned bodies to
the cave-dwellers. When they became more housed and more clothed, they
captured the juices of the flowers in nutshells, and later in stone
bottles, until now science disdains animals and flowers, but takes
chemicals and waste products to make a hundred essences and unguents