There are a number of hotels in Papeëte--mostly of an indifferent sort, and none too cheap--and there are several large cafés and restaurants, run on lines entirely Parisian, and a crowd of smaller ones, many owned, by Chinese, where the hard-up white may feed at a very small cost, pleasantly enough, if he does not ask too many questions about the origin and preparation of his food. There are three local newspapers, and a military band plays in the afternoons, and there are clubs of all kinds’ and not a little society, which--being society--is in its essence bound to be uninteresting and flat, even here in the many-coloured South Seas. But under all this, the native life flows on in its own way, and the Tahitian takes his pleasure after his immemorial fashion, as quietly and as lazily as he is allowed. I have spoken hitherto of only one side of the main street. The other, which gives directly on the sea, belongs to the Tahitian life of Tahiti. Here, a green slope of soft grass stretches down to the greener waters of the sparkling lagoon: delicate palms lean over the still sea-mirror, like beauties smiling into a glass; flamboyant and frangipani trees drop crimson and creamy blooms upon the grass; and, among the flowers, facing the sea and the ships and the dreamy green lagoon, lie the natives, old and young. They wear the lightest of cotton clothing, scarlet and rose and butter-cup yellow, and white scented flowers are twisted in their hair. Fruits of many colours, and roots and fish, lie beside them. They eat a good part of the day, and their dogs, sleeping blissfully in the shade at their feet, wake up and eat with them now and then. There is plenty for both--no one ever goes short of food in Tahiti, where the pinch of cold and hunger, and the burden of hard, unremitting, unholidayed work are alike unknown. Sometimes the natives wander away to the river that flows through the town, and take a bath in its cool waters; returning later to lounge, and laze, and suck fruit, and dream, on the shores of the lagoon again. The sound of the surf, droning all day long on the coral reef that bars the inner lake of unruffled green from the outer ocean of windy blue, seems to charm them into a soft half-sleep, through which, with open but unseeing eyes, they watch the far-off creaming of the breakers in the sun, and the flutter of huge velvet butterflies among the flowers, and the brown canoes gliding like water-beetles about the tall-masted schooners in the harbour. With sunset comes a cooling of the heated air, and glowworm lights begin to twinkle through the translucent red walls of the little native houses scattered here and there. It will soon be dark now: after dark, there will be dancing and singing in the house; later, the sleeping mats will be laid out, and with the moon and the stars glimmering in through the walls upon their still brown faces, the Tahitians will sleep.... So, in the sunset, with