keep up their minstrelsy for hours upon a stretch, one song
following another without pause. In like manner, the Marquesan,
never industrious, begins now to cease altogether from production.
The exports of the group decline out of all proportion even with
the death-rate of the islanders. 'The coral waxes, the palm grows,
and man departs,' says the Marquesan; and he folds his hands. And
surely this is nature. Fond as it may appear, we labour and
refrain, not for the rewards of any single life, but with a timid
eye upon the lives and memories of our successors; and where no one
is to succeed, of his own family, or his own tongue, I doubt
whether Rothschilds would make money or Cato practise virtue. It
is natural, also, that a temporary stimulus should sometimes rouse
the Marquesan from his lethargy. Over all the landward shore of
Anaho cotton runs like a wild weed; man or woman, whoever comes to
pick it, may earn a dollar in the day; yet when we arrived, the
trader's store-house was entirely empty; and before we left it was
near full. So long as the circus was there, so long as the Casco
was yet anchored in the bay, it behoved every one to make his
visit; and to this end every woman must have a new dress, and every
man a shirt and trousers. Never before, in Mr. Regler's
experience, had they displayed so much activity.

In their despondency there is an element of dread. The fear of
ghosts and of the dark is very deeply written in the mind of the
Polynesian; not least of the Marquesan. Poor Taipi, the chief of
Anaho, was condemned to ride to Hatiheu on a moonless night. He
borrowed a lantern, sat a long while nerving himself for the
adventure, and when he at last departed, wrung the Cascos by the
hand as for a final separation. Certain presences, called
Vehinehae, frequent and make terrible the nocturnal roadside; I was