congregate along the wider boulevard-Avenue Bruat-which has a row of trees on each side, and through street after street, all with old-world names. In the official quarter of the town is an open, Trocadero-like space, with a bandstand in its centre, where every Wednesday night the Government-paid orchestra, under the French bandmaster, plays "selections," and all the monde and the demi-monde, which here seem inextricably mixed up, turn out to listen and enjoy the cool air, and make new conquests, permanent or temporary, as the ladies happen to be white or brown.

I look for old landmarks in vain. The wide "Broom," stretching from the town to the water's edge, where, as the Earl and the Doctor describe, may be heard the soft cooing of the brown girls inviting their mates, is now nearly all built upon, and the rare patches open towards the outskirts are fenced off with the modernest of barbed wires. Many a hunt do I make for brown ladies walking about with lovely, dear little pet pigs, adorned with bows of rose-coloured ribbon, as mentioned by Lady Brassey, but upon never a one do I cast eyes. I cannot say that I expect to see them, not being built in that sanguine way, and knowing, as I have known all my life, that the dingily black-and-white marked, razor-backed, longsnouted, shambling, surly, Maori pig, from New Zealand to Fiji, from Tonga to Tahiti, is, even among pigs, the ugliest, most uninteresting brute alive.

The market-place is the centre of Papeëtienne life. At 5 am, especially on Sunday, it is a busy mart of meat, fruit, and vegetables, of poultry and fish. In railed-in spots the butchers are hard at work chopping up ugly-looking lumps of beef and mutton. I go in with a friend who, after long talking, says he must hurry or nothing fit to eat will be left to buy. He has to content himself, as it is growing late (6 a.m.), with a chunk of beef-I defy anyone to say what part of the animal it is—at 2s per lb., i.e., in Chilian dollars. These debased coins are now in general use over the Society and Cook Groups. The natives like them because they are large, and look a lot for their money. These islanders have been so exploited and swindled in every conceivable form of exchange, even to tons of iron money from Central American States, that the Chilian dollar is to them now quite a respectable coin. The British sovereign here, as everywhere else in the known world, is the king of coins, and we get ten Chilian dollars in exchange for as many as we like to part with, so that the shin beef at half a dollar per lb. is not so dear as it looks. Here there are five species of exchange in constant use: Tahitian-French paper money for local circulation; French coin or paper money, which is compulsory in

all Government dealings; Chilian dollars at 50% discount; American and English silver at full face-values. Gold, of course, is full facevalue, but it is as scarce here as in Spain. Trade remittances are generally in drafts on San Francisco, Sydney, or Auckland firms or banks. The trade between Tahiti and America is an old-established one. Here exists perhaps the last royal mail subsidized sailing service of

Half-caste mistress of a French officia!, Papeëte. "The monde and the demi-monde "

any importance in the world. A line of fast schooners carry mails, passengers, and cargo once a month between Papeëte and San Francisco. The vessels take irregularly, in the summer and winter seasons, 35 to 45 days to do the trip either way. The accommodation is fair, but French passengers grumble at the food. The New Zealand Union Steamship Co. having once started a line from New Zealand to the Cook and Society Groups will, no doubt, extend a monthy service from

Tahiti to Samoa, there to join their San Francisco mail steamers; and the Royal Mail American Schooners will be things of the past.

In the evenings the market is a meeting-place for all sorts and conditions of men and women. Up and down saunter groups of brown girls. Here and there among the crowd are French men-of-war sailors, English and American visitors, Chinamen, native men from other islands, native girls, evidently new arrivals, older hands standing outside the drinking-shops and being served in the street with wine or beer by admiring swains (women are not allowed in the bars); Frenchmen. in cool white, but no ladies, except English and American ones from the schooners and steamers, who will see everything, and don't care a pin's head what the French-Tahitenne Mrs. Grundy thinks. Round a railed-in fountain are seated a dozen or two of native lads playing on "mouth organs," while a band of girls sing songs or, more accurately, chant boastful, minutely-realistic descriptions of their dissipations on the previous night, in unstinted praise of the generosity of the French gentlemen. All along the sides and down the centre are squatted, or seated on chairs, elderly native women-women are the masters here with little bundles of fruit, confections, wreaths of gardenias and other flowers or of shells, on tables or on the ground in front of them: the whole stock worth a dollar or two, and lighted by a solitary candle. The same stock seems to be there night after night, and they sit patiently the whole evening awaiting customers who seldom come. Perhaps to one of these old Maori women as the night comes on will step up a daintily-gloved French gentleman, and shake hands, and the following dialogue will be carried on in the French language:—

"Good evening, madame. Where is Mademoiselle Annette?" "Oh! she will be here directly, monsieur."

By-and-bye comes Mademoiselle Annette, a good-looking half-caste of sixteen. At twenty-four absinthe and dissipation will make her look like an old woman. She knows now through missionaries (for which all honour to them for good intention) what we mean by modesty, and her later state is ten times worse than that of her ancestors. Unlike primitive and behaved girls of some remoter island she is "modestly" and tastefully covered with clothes from her ankles to her neck, and would be shocked to be seen otherwise attired now. She is the pro

duct of native custom, plus missionary costume, multiplied into French morality.

He putting an arm round her neck, her arm going round his waist, they skip away down the street and out of sight. Toward ten o'clock half a dozen or a dozen couples may be seen at one time skipping off in the same elegant fashion. Native fathers and mothers look on with

complacency, and, indeed, all the natives, down to the young lads, take quite an interest. In the market-place and elsewhere it is a matter of evident congratulation when a girl goes off; so all the old ladies. squatting before their stocks of nicknacks, and everyone else-man, woman, and child-look pleased at the increase of business. By-andbye the market-place is emptied, the lights are put out, and there is

silence until reappear the noisy morning marketers, bringing with them clean, wholesome daylight, and pure fruits and flowers.

With all its pretty, tinsel finery, its imitation boulevards, its bandstand, and its clubs, there is no family hotel in all Papeëte. There are houses that supply board to regular customers, but decline to cater for strangers. At the Hotel de France one can hire an unfurnished room to sleep in, but no food or private furnished accommodation is provided. There are two restaurants where

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déjeûner and dinner can be ordered, but the result of the ordering is not eminently satisfactory. The only comfortable way to spend a few months in Papeëte is to rent a cottage, furnish it—not much furniture is needed or advisable in this climate-and arrange for déjeuner and dinner in one of the restaurants or boarding-houses, preparing early cafe au lait and supper at home as required. Servants are not easily obtainable, and the native youths and girls would be more a trouble than an assistance. They will not work steadily. They leave and go home to their huts at any moment without warning. A South African colonial tourist, one of our passengers, intended to stop awhile exploring the country. He was not over fastidious, as his travelling steerage showed; but after hunting all Papeëte he could get no place decently comfortable, and so returned in the same steamer. House rent is cheap, large cottages being obtainable at £24 a year, and a really good house, with large grounds attached, has been in the market for some time at £50 a year without finding a tenant. Tourists coming here to stay for, say, six or twelve months, would be wise to bring French, Negro, Chinese, or Indian servants with them.

Walking through its shady avenues along the water, and looking on to the magnificent scene around, one feels that Papeëte is a perfect little paradise. Very different is the opinion of one of the common sailors I came across reading his Bible at daybreak one morning on a forecastle head.

"This place!" said he, laying down the Sacred Book for a minute to talk to me; "it is a hell on earth, and the forecastles of the ships are not much better."

It is a fact that, from what they constantly see around them, French and even English women here gradually get into the way of talking of the relations most sacred between the sexes in a surprisingly callous way where native or half-caste women are concerned.

Though thoroughly French as yet, the influence of English neighbourhood is gradually becoming felt, and is noticeable even in the signboards in two languages, such as: Voilier, Sailmaker. The hope, openly cherished by English and Americans, secretly by one or two of the French traders, is that some day there will be war or exchange of territory between England and France, and Tahiti will become an English colony by conquest or barter. Speculative purchasers of land are especially anxious for this result. No Frenchman will work on the land. The landlords know that it is valueless without cultivation, and they think what a magnificent haul they would make were a crowd of energetic English colonists to take up blocks, and