By Sunset, The Back Of The Squall Had Broken Though It Was Still Too
Rough For The Canoe.
So I had Tehei find a native who was willing
to venture his cutter across to Raiatea for the outrageous sum of
two dollars, Chili, which is equivalent in our money to ninety
cents.
Half the village was told off to carry presents, with which
Tehei and Bihaura speeded their parting guests - captive chickens,
fishes dressed and swathed in wrappings of green leaves, great
golden bunches of bananas, leafy baskets spilling over with oranges
and limes, alligator pears (the butter-fruit, also called the
avoca), huge baskets of yams, bunches of taro and cocoanuts, and
last of all, large branches and trunks of trees - firewood for the
Snark.
While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa,
and of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six
years of age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in
the Society Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush
to Eldorado in 'forty-nine and a short period of ranching in
California near Tulare. Given no more than three months by the
doctors to live, he had returned to his South Seas and lived to
eighty-six and to chuckle over the doctors aforesaid, who were all
in their graves. Fee-fee he had, which is the native for
elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay. A quarter of a
century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and it would
remain with him until he died.
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