All islanders are not courteous and considerate, but the huge majority certainly are. You shall look many a day and many a week among the sea-countries of the Pacific, before you meet with as much rudeness, selfishness, or unkindness, as you may meet any day without looking at all, on any railway platform of any town of civilised white England. And not from one end of the South Seas to the other, shall you hear anything like the harsh, loud, unmusical voice of the dominant race, in a native mouth. Soft and gentle always is the island speech, musical and kind--the speech of a race that knows neither hurry nor greed, and for whom the days are long and sweet, and “always afternoon.”
When we went out to see the island, it was at the head of a gay procession of men, women, and children, singing ceaselessly, in loud metallic chants and choruses. Shy of the strange white apparition at first, the women grew bolder by degrees, and hung long necklaces of flowers and leaves and scented berries round my neck. They took my hat away, and returned it covered with feathery reva-reva plumes, made from the inner crown of the palm-tree. They produced a native dancing kilt, like a little crinoline, made of arrowroot fibre, dyed pink, and tied it round my waist, over my tailor skirt, explaining the while (through the captain, who interpreted), that the knot of the girdle was fastened in such a way as to cast a spell on me, and that I should inevitably be obliged to return to the island. (It is perhaps worthy of note that I did, though at the time of my first visit there seemed no chance of the ship calling again.) Decked out after this fashion, I had a _suces_; on my return to the schooner, and was greeted with howls of delight on the part of my fellow-passengers, who had managed to escape adornment, being less of a novelty. It was of course impossible to remove the ornaments without offending the givers.
More houses, and more hosts, standing like Lewis Carroll’s crocodile on their thresholds, to welcome me in “with gently smiling jaws.” We visited till we were tired of visiting, and then strolled about the town. Cool, fresh, and clean are the houses of little Mitiaro, dotted about its three miles’ length. Their high deep-gabled roofs of plaited pandanus leaf keep out the heat of the staring sun; through their walls of smoothed and fitted canes the sea-wind blows and the green lagoon gleams dimly: the snowy coral pebbles that carpet all the floor reflect a softly pleasant light into the dusk, unwindowed dwelling. Outside, the palm-trees rustle endlessly, and the surf sings on the reef the long, low, perilous sweet song of the dreamy South Sea world--the song that has lured so many away into these lonely coral lands, to remember their Northern loves and homes no more--the song that, once heard, will whisper through the inmost chambers of the heart, across the years, and across the world till death.
