ABSTRACT
Rarahu's mother had brought her to Tahiti, the big island, the queen's island, to make a present of her to a very old woman of the Apiré district to whom she was distantly related. This was in obedience to an ancient custom of the Tahitian race by which children rarely grow up in the care of their mother. Adoptive fathers and mothers (faa amu) are there most common, and the family is collected as chance directs. This time-honoured exchanging of children is one of the quaint peculiarities of Polynesian manners.
