XLI

We were making our way, at this hour of the night, to the district of Faaa, where Taïmaha was to show me her youngest child, Atario. It was with a sort of condescending irony that she had lent herself to gratify this whim of mine—a fancy which to her Tahitian notions seemed almost unaccountable. In this land, where want is unknown, where there is room for every living soul in the sun and in the shade and in the water, and food for all in the woods, children grow up as the plants do, free and uncared for, wherever their parents may have chosen to place them. The family has none of the cohesion which, in Europe, it derives from the struggle for life if from no other motive.