The most careless reader must have remarked a change of air since
the Marquesas. The house, crowded with effects, the bustling
housewife counting her possessions, the serious, indoctrinated
island pastor, the long fight for life in the lagoon: here are
traits of a new world. I read in a pamphlet (I will not give the
author's name) that the Marquesan especially resembles the
Paumotuan. I should take the two races, though so near in
neighbourhood, to be extremes of Polynesian diversity. The
Marquesan is certainly the most beautiful of human races, and one
of the tallest--the Paumotuan averaging a good inch shorter, and
not even handsome; the Marquesan open-handed, inert, insensible to
religion, childishly self-indulgent--the Paumotuan greedy, hardy,
enterprising, a religious disputant, and with a trace of the
ascetic character.

Yet a few years ago, and the people of the archipelago were crafty
savages. Their isles might be called sirens' isles, not merely
from the attraction they exerted on the passing mariner, but from
the perils that awaited him on shore. Even to this day, in certain
outlying islands, danger lingers; and the civilized Paumotuan
dreads to land and hesitates to accost his backward brother. But,
except in these, to-day the peril is a memory. When our generation
were yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact.
Between 1830 and 1840, Hao, for instance, was a place of the most
dangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews kidnapped.
As late as 1856, the schooner Sarah Ann sailed from Papeete and was
seen no more. She had women on board, and children, the captain's
wife, a nursemaid, a baby, and the two young sons of a Captain