tunics. Their skins, not brown nor red nor yellow, but tawny like
that of the white man deeply tanned by the sun, reminded me again
that these people may trace back their ancestry to the Caucasian
cradle. The hair of the women was adorned with gay flowers or the
leaves of the false coffee bush. Their single garments of gorgeous
colors clung to their straight, rounded bodies, their dark eyes were
soft and full of light as the eyes of deer, and their features,
clean-cut and severe, were of classic lines.

The men, tall and massive, seemed awkwardly constricted in
ill-fitting, blue cotton overalls such as American laborers wear
over street-clothes. Their huge bodies seemed about to break through
the flimsy bindings, and the carriage of their striking heads made
the garments ridiculous. Most of them had fairly regular features on
a large scale, their mouths wide, and their lips full and sensual.
They wore no hats or ornaments, though it has ever been the custom
of all Polynesians to put flowers and wreaths upon their heads.

Men and women were waiting with a kind of apathetic resignation;
melancholy and unresisting despair seemed the only spirit left to
them.

On the veranda with the governor and Bauda were several whites, one
a French woman to whom we were presented. Madame Bapp, fat and
red-faced, in a tight silk gown over corsets, was twice the size of
her husband, a dapper, small man with huge mustaches, a paper collar
to his ears, and a fiery, red-velvet cravat.

On a table were bottles of absinthe and champagne, and several
demijohns of red wine stood on the floor. All our company attacked