a Marquesan, dying of this discouragement--perhaps I should rather
say this acquiescence--has been known, at the fulfilment of his
crowning wish, on the mere sight of that desired hermitage, his
coffin--to revive, recover, shake off the hand of death, and be
restored for years to his occupations--carving tikis (idols), let
us say, or braiding old men's beards. From all this it may be
conceived how easily they meet death when it approaches naturally.
I heard one example, grim and picturesque. In the time of the
small-pox in Hapaa, an old man was seized with the disease; he had
no thought of recovery; had his grave dug by a wayside, and lived
in it for near a fortnight, eating, drinking, and smoking with the
passers-by, talking mostly of his end, and equally unconcerned for
himself and careless of the friends whom he infected.

This proneness to suicide, and loose seat in life, is not peculiar
to the Marquesan. What is peculiar is the widespread depression
and acceptance of the national end. Pleasures are neglected, the
dance languishes, the songs are forgotten. It is true that some,
and perhaps too many, of them are proscribed; but many remain, if
there were spirit to support or to revive them. At the last feast
of the Bastille, Stanislao Moanatini shed tears when he beheld the
inanimate performance of the dancers. When the people sang for us
in Anaho, they must apologise for the smallness of their repertory.
They were only young folk present, they said, and it was only the
old that knew the songs. The whole body of Marquesan poetry and
music was being suffered to die out with a single dispirited
generation. The full import is apparent only to one acquainted
with other Polynesian races; who knows how the Samoan coins a fresh
song for every trifling incident, or who has heard (on Penrhyn, for
instance) a band of little stripling maids from eight to twelve