The Dark River [antikvár]

CHAPTER I At the southeastern extremity of the island of Tahiti, and connected with it by a narrow isthmus, lies the peninsula of Taiarapu, where ancient weathered mountains, green to the topmost pinnacles, rise abruptly from the sea, rank beyond rank, until they are lost to view in shrouds of rain. On the northern side, a grass-grown road, which branches from the main thoroughfare at the isthmus, follows the sunlit coastal land through groves of coconut palms, breadfruit and mango trees, until it reaches the village of Tautira, the farthest settlement on that side of the island. Beyond this village, and extending for a distance of nearly twenty miles, lies a region known as the Fenua Aaîhere, — the Land of Forests, — long since depopulated, and bearing to-day scarcely a sign of human habitation. On a February afternoon a small canoe with two occupants was skirting this lonely region along the lagoons that border the eastern side of the Taiarapu Peninsula. The man on the stern thwart was a native, about sixty years of age, with a lined, rugged, and kindly face, and the muscular frame common even to the older men of his race. He was naked to the waist and wore a weather-stained pandanus hat pressed over his thick gray hair. He paddled with the unconscious ease of breathing, first on one side, then on the other, and the canoe, slipping along with a faint seething hiss, appeared to be guiding itself through the channels of vivid green water, darkening at times to deepest blue, amongst the scattered coral shoals that rose here and there to within a few inches