A Woman's Journey Round The World, From Vienna To Brazil, Chili, Tahiti, China, Hindostan, Persia, And Asia Minor By Ida Pfeiffer
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On One
Occasion I Could Not Help Telling One Of The Gentlemen My Opinion Of
The Matter, And Expressing My
Astonishment that they could treat
these grasping and avaricious creatures with such attention and
kindness, to load them with presents,
Anticipate their every wish,
and forgive and put up with their most glaring faults. The answer I
received was: that these ladies, if not so treated and loaded with
presents, would quickly run off, and that, in fact, even by the
kindest attentions they never allowed themselves to be influenced
very long.
From all I saw, I must repeat my former assertion, that the Tahitian
people are endowed with none of the more noble sentiments of
humanity, but that their only pleasures are merely animal. Nature
herself encourages them to this in an extraordinary manner. They
have no need to gain their bread by the sweat of their brow; the
island is most plentifully supplied with beautiful fruit, tubercles
of all descriptions, and tame pigs, so that the people have really
only to gather the fruit and kill the pigs. To this circumstance is
to be attributed the difficulty that exists of obtaining any one as
servant or in any other capacity. The most wretched journeyman will
not work for less than a dollar a-day; the price for washing a dozen
handkerchiefs, or any other articles, is also a dollar (4s.), not
including soap. A native, whom I desired to engage as guide,
demanded a dollar and a half a day.
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