that he greets the reality with relief. He does not even seek to
support a disappointment; at an affront, at a breach of one of his
fleeting and communistic love-affairs, he seeks an instant refuge
in the grave. Hanging is now the fashion. I heard of three who
had hanged themselves in the west end of Hiva-oa during the first
half of 1888; but though this be a common form of suicide in other
parts of the South Seas, I cannot think it will continue popular in
the Marquesas. Far more suitable to Marquesan sentiment is the old
form of poisoning with the fruit of the eva, which offers to the
native suicide a cruel but deliberate death, and gives time for
those decencies of the last hour, to which he attaches such
remarkable importance. The coffin can thus be at hand, the pigs
killed, the cry of the mourners sounding already through the house;
and then it is, and not before, that the Marquesan is conscious of
achievement, his life all rounded in, his robes (like Caesar's)
adjusted for the final act. Praise not any man till he is dead,
said the ancients; envy not any man till you hear the mourners,
might be the Marquesan parody. The coffin, though of late
introduction, strangely engages their attention. It is to the
mature Marquesan what a watch is to the European schoolboy. For
ten years Queen Vaekehu had dunned the fathers; at last, but the
other day, they let her have her will, gave her her coffin, and the
woman's soul is at rest. I was told a droll instance of the force
of this preoccupation. The Polynesians are subject to a disease
seemingly rather of the will than of the body. I was told the
Tahitians have a word for it, erimatua, but cannot find it in my
dictionary. A gendarme, M. Nouveau, has seen men beginning to
succumb to this insubstantial malady, has routed them from their
houses, turned them on to do their trick upon the roads, and in two
days has seen them cured. But this other remedy is more original: