often bring failure to the orchards in more temperate climates. The continuous summer and the wonderful fertility of the soil in tropic and subtropic countries reward richly the labor of the husbandman by two and sometimes three harvests a year, as nature's forces require no rest, no slumber there. Life in a changeable, severe climate is full of hardships; in the tropics, of ease and leisure. The nearer we come to the tropics, the closer we approach the conditions of primitive man. The necessities of life increase as we recede on either side of the equatorial line. The dreamy, easy, care-free life in the tropics is in strong contrast with the severe and arduous struggles for existence in countries less favored by the resources of nature. Among the trees in the Garden of Eden, the palm tree was undoubtedly the most beautiful, and it remains to-day the queen of the forests of the seacoast in the tropics. The palm-clad isles of the South Sea bear a closer resemblance to the description of the Garden of Eden than any other of the many parts of the world that I have ever seen; and of these, Tahiti is a real paradise on earth. There is no country nor other isle where Nature has been so liberal in the distribution of her gifts. No other island can compare in natural beauty with Tahiti, the gem of the South Pacific Ocean. It is the island where life is free of care. It is the island where the natives are fed, clothed and housed by nature It is the island where man is born, eats his daily bread without being forced to labor, sleeps and dreams away his life free from worry, and enjoys the foretaste of the eternal paradise before he dies. It is the island which must have been born In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now. BROWNING. It is the island of which the poet must have been musing when he wrote: Amid an isle around whose rocky shore POPE. THE ISLAND OF TAHITI About three thousand six hundred miles south by southwest from San Francisco are the Society Islands, a small archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, in latitude 16 to 18 degrees south, longitude 148 to 155 degrees west. Captain Cook named this group in honor of the Royal Society of London. The largest two of these islands, Tahiti and Moorea, are of volcanic origin, mountainous and heavily timbered; the remaining islands are small, low, of coral origin, and are called atolls. In approaching the archipelago from San Francisco, a few of these palm-fringed atoll islands come first into view, forming a pleasing foreground to the rugged mountains of Tahiti and its smaller neighbor, Moorea, which are sighted almost at the same time. After a voyage over the desert ocean of thirteen days (all this time out of sight of land), to gaze on the most beautiful islands of this group is a source of exquisite pleasure. Sea-girt isles, That like to rich and various gems, inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep. MILTON. The South Pacific Ocean is the natural home of the coral polyps, which are great islandbuilders, using the volcanic material as a foun dation for the coral superstructure. As these minute builders can live only in shallow water, they use submerged mountain peaks for their foundations, converting them into low atolls, and building reefs around the base of the high volcanic islands. Most of the Society Islands are of coral formation perched upon submerged mountain summits. The island of Tahiti is small, of little commercial interest, and hence it is comparatively unknown to the masses of the people. Very few who left the schoolroom twenty-five years ago would be able to locate it without consulting a geography, and many have even forgotten the name. The children fresh from school recall it in connection with the difficulty they encountered in finding the little dot in the great, trackless South Pacific Ocean, surrounded by a group of still smaller specks, representing the remainder of the little archipelago to which it belongs. Tahiti is nearly four thousand miles distant from San Francisco, in a southwesterly direction, below the equator, in latitude 17, hence in a similar latitude to that of the Hawaiian Islands, which are situated about the same distance north of the equator. I had heard much of the natural beauty of this far-off island and its interesting inhabitants, and decided to spend my midwinter vacation in 1904 in paying it a visit. Formerly the passage |