formed their most costly girdle. The former, among this generally beardless
and short-lived people, fetch to-day considerable sums.

{2c} "Tikis." The tiki is an ugly image hewn out of wood or stone.

{2d} "The one-stringed harp." Usually employed for serenades.

{2e} "The sacred cabin of palm." Which, however, no woman could approach.
I do not know where women were tattooed; probably in the common house, or in
the bush, for a woman was a creature of small account. I must guard the
reader against supposing Taheia was at all disfigured; the art of the
Marquesan tattooer is extreme; and she would appear to be clothed in a web of
lace, inimitably delicate, exquisite in pattern, and of a bluish hue that at
once contrasts and harmonises with the warm pigment of the native skin. It
would be hard to find a woman more becomingly adorned than "a well-tattooed"
Marquesan.

{2f} "The horror of night." The Polynesian fear of ghosts and of the dark
has been already referred to. Their life is beleaguered by the dead.

{2g} "The quiet passage of souls." So, I am told, the natives explain the
sound of a little wind passing overhead unfelt.

{2h} "The first of the victims fell." Without doubt, this whole scene is
untrue to fact. The victims were disposed of privately and some time before.
And indeed I am far from claiming the credit of any high degree of accuracy
for this ballad. Even in a time of famine, it is probable that Marquesan
life went far more gaily than is here represented. But the melancholy of to-
day lies on the writer's mind.