Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/125

Rh sea. Yet even to-day the ruins of about 40 maraes are still to be found upon Tahiti and Eimeo.

Such, in brief, were the Tahitians, that race of giant men who came to welcome Cook with leafy boughs within their hands—tokens of peace and friendship. And a friendship real as any that can be formed between the weak and the powerful grew up between the great Englishman, whom they called "Toote," and these careless, light-hearted children of the Islands of the Sea. It is of curious interest, however, to observe that intimate as Cook became with his Tahitian friends, he never learned the true name of the Island, his word "Otaheite" meaning "From Tahiti"; Bougainville's "Taiti" especially as the "h" is softly sounded, being far nearer the correct representation of the name.

Without attempting to minimize the barbarity of their customs, let us not permit ourselves to be over harsh in condemning the Tahitians. A primitive race cast far from their original home upon a small island remotely isolated; without iron or metals, or clay for pottery, and living in a warm seductive atmosphere that soothed ambition into somnolency; it is much to their credit that Cook says of them that they were cheerful, generous, cordial, and brave, and Ellis states that theft and crime were of rare occurrence. Such indeed is the consensus of opinion among Europeans who, though not missionaries, lived among Polynesian peoples during the days when they were unspoiled by contact with civilization. In Mariner's fascinating account of Tonga, and Melville's charming story of Typee in the Marquesas we find far more of praise than of condemnation.

Let us remember that practically nothing of invention, art, literature, science or constructive leadership has come from the untold millions of our own race who have been born and bred and spent their languid lives within the torrid heat. Great men such as Hamilton, the first Dumas, or Kipling have, it is true, been born in the West Indies or in India, but their education and achievements were attained in colder lands. The history of the British in India is replete with the tragedy of broken hearts, and every ship bound "homeward" bears its freight of exiled children whose fate it is to become strangers to their duty-loving parents. This uncounted toll of the dull, monotonous, never-ending heat, how different would history have been had our race been born to withstand its merciless suppression.

Just as the first fruits of the renaissance were ripening in Spain, a vision of the Indies came like a mirage from afar to lure onward the ablest of her youth. Into regions unknown they went never to return, and they and their descendants were lost to intellectual Spain. Thus was her best blood wasted and the leaders who might have been were unborn. Spain depleted, drained of her strength, and with too few at home to win the great battle of liberty, withered under the fires of