True, the foregoing is hearsay, but it is first-hand hearsay, and on the best possible authority.
The only other Island witchcraft that I have encountered and can vouch for personally is fire-walking, a well known Kanaka pastime. That natives can make a pit of stones white hot with burning brush-wood, and then walk bare-footed upon them for upward of two minutes, is not so wonderful to the skeptic who knows that they paint the soles of their feet with a secret preparation that is a non-conductor of heat. But the fact that they can lead a white man, whose feet are not so treated, over the same stones, is a "trick" that needs some explaining.
Then, there is the herb for the unfailing and harmless production of abortion; a preparation of such preservative powers that it will keep the human body for centuries; and an innumerable array of magic potions undreamed of in our philosophy. Undoubtedly the Islands have their secrets, as quaint and wonderful as any in darkest Africa, and some day—which I trust is not far off—I hope to "inquire more closely."
Our planter friends of Moorea appeared to lead a pleasant life. Theirs was a bachelor bungalow run by efficient house-boys, and set on the fringe of a palm grove overlooking a vista of sea and reef and mountain as beautiful as any in the Island—which means in the world.
They were growing vanilla, and, although Britishers, had chosen Moorea as the scene of their labours because they preferred French rule.
"The French don't mess you about like our own people," one of them informed us. "They're not anti-this and anti-that. They leave you alone, and I can tell you we appreciate it after visiting a few of our colony-governed colonies." He referred, of course, to the mandates given to Australia and New Zealand over certain groups of the South Pacific. "It's like giving a kid something to play with. He's bound to break it."
The other of our two hosts was engaged in a passage-at-arms with Peter, and I pitied him. Trust a woman for either kindling or dousing a flame of enthusiasm in the male breast. But as she still holds to her viewpoint, and the question at issue involves every white woman who contemplates living in the South Sea Islands, it is of interest, and I take the liberty—and the risk—of quoting from her diary:
"One of them (our hosts) was engaged to an English girl of eighteen, and was going to send for her in a month or two, but expected opposition from her parents, who thought the Society Islands too uncivilized and out of the world for a young girl to be happy in. I must say I agreed with them.
"Perhaps for the first few months the novelty would keep her amused; but after that! I cannot imagine an intelligent, energetic girl being content to live her life on an island, however beautiful, where she would be the only white woman.
"I said something of the sort to her fiancé, since he asked my opinion. He said he had promised her a horse, as she was intensely keen on riding. Even then it meant that she would have to keep to the track which ran round the island, and one soon wearies of the same ride day after day, when there is no object in view but exercise.