Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/466

462 having been introduced by the great German merchant, Godeffroy, in the middle of the nineteenth century, has proved to be the commercial salvation of Polynesia.

But to return to the political history of Tahiti. On December 7, 1821, Pomare II. died as a result of long-continued drunkenness, and on April 21, 1824, his son, a boy of four years, was crowned by Mr. Nott, one of the original missionaries as "Pomare III., constitutional king of Tahiti." The education of the young "king" was at once undertaken by the missionaries, but on January 11, 1827, he died of an epidemic which was then ravaging the island; and Aimata, his half sister, was proclaimed queen, taking the name of Pomare-Vahine (The Lady Pomare), although more commonly known as "Queen Pomare IV."

At the time of her accession she was only about thirteen years of age, and thus dependent upon the missionaries for advice, and, as the sequel proved, rarely was queen more in need of broad-minded and tactful advisers, for the end of Tahitian independence was at hand, and the fateful question was—should England or should France assume the government of the island?

Several elements in the foreign population were causing trouble to the natives, these being the traders who sought to bleed the Tahitians of all the little wealth they possessed, the degenerate deserters from ships and other parasitic whites who were a constant source of demoralization, and the sons of the missionaries, who, in general, lacked the altruism of their parents and sought to acquire land and to exploit the Island at the expense of the natives. Conditions such as these have worked themselves out in the Hawaiian Islands, ending by the descendants of the missionaries acquiring nearly all the lands the natives once possessed.

In Tahiti the native chiefs, following the policy they adopted in respect to the cultivation of sugar cane, had determined to discourage the permanent residence of white men among them, and had steadfastly refused to sell or even to grant long leases to their land, and thus the natives as a race were still independent home-owners, and happy in the enjoyment of their accustomed means of obtaining sustenance.

The salient fact is that the white settler in the tropics is concerned chiefly with his own profit, and but little with the elevation of the native race. Through artificial devices designed to restrict the liberty of the natives, or through the imposition of high taxes, the white man virtually peonizes the native race and forces the brown man to labor far beyond the little effort required to provide all his natural needs, and in the end the profit accruing from such toil is found in the pockets of the white man. To-day over those parts of the tropics wherein the white man gains a profit from the land, as in the Dutch East Indies or in parts of Africa, this modern ingenious form of slavery pertains. In other