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POINT VENUS

Every visitor to Tahiti should visit Point Venus, as it is a historic place near where the Europeans made their first landings in Matavai Bay, and where the first white settlers cast their lot with the natives. It is in this neighborhood where the English missionaries established their permanent home and from here spread the new tidings of the gospel over the entire island. They labored in vain for nearly twenty years, when all at once a religious wave swept over the island which resulted in the speedy Christianization of almost the entire population. I have already referred to Point Venus as the place where the government lighthouse is located and where Captain Cook had his headquarters when he and the scientists who accompanied him observed the transit of Venus by order of the English government in the year 1769. The place where the scientific observations were made is marked by a modest monument of stone surrounded by an iron railing, on which are inscribed the data commemorative of the work accomplished. Close by this monument, on the most prominent point, has been erected the lighthouse which guides the mariner in approaching the island during the night. The distance from Papeete to Point Venus is seven miles, over a macadamized road

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which we found in a somewhat neglected condition. Two native villages, Pirae and Arue, are passed on the way, and a third, Haapape, is close by. The road leads through groves of cocoapalms, primeval forests and jungles, and a part of it skirts the foot-hills of the towering mountains. Most of the time the beautiful lagoon, dotted here and there with fishermen's canoes, is in sight. The calmness of the air, the solemnity of the surroundings and the sight of these canoes on the unruffled lagoon, reminded us of

Low stir of leaves and dip of oars

And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
WHITTIER.

Some of the more daring fishermen we saw outside of the reef, in the same frail crafts, battling with a rougher sea, but the skilled use of their very primitive paddles kept the canoes in good motion and steady, and it seemed

She walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife.

BYRON.

Matavai Bay, which the road follows for a considerable distance, is a beautiful sheet of water. It was in this bay that the ships of the early voyagers found a resting-place, and where on its shore the first white men touched the soil of Tahiti and came face to face with a people who had never heard of a world outside of the

islands of the Pacific. The scenery all along this drive is truly tropical. The floral wealth is great and its variety endless. It was on this drive I found the passion-flower in full bloom and exquisite beauty.

Near Point Venus we met a gang of natives, in charge of the chief of the district, engaged in repairing the road. All except the chief were in loin-cloths as their only article of dress. They worked leisurely, and smoked and chatted in a way that showed that they were happy even when bearing the burden of the day and the scorching rays of the tropic sun, with nothing in view for their ten-o'clock breakfast but the cool mountain water instead of coffee, breadfruit or plantain (fei) for bread, and some fruit gathered in the woods on their way to work.

The round trip from Papeete to Point Venus can be made in three hours, and gives one a very excellent idea of the general topography of the island and is replete with both pleasure and profit.

FAUTAHUA VALLEY

The next interesting short drive from Papeete is to the Fautahua Valley, distance four miles. It is noted for delightful river scenery and tropic vegetation, and at the end of the valley is a beautiful waterfall. This charming valley, with its typical tropic scenery enclosed by towering mountains and resounding with the rippling, dashing music of a turbulent mountain stream and the babbling and murmuring of the many brooks and rivulets of pure crystal water which feed it, is well worth a visit. This valley was once densely populated, if we can judge from the abundance of imported fruit trees and the coffee shrub which now flourish in the forest unaided by the care of man, while, at the present time, the native huts are few and far apart. Wild arrowroot grows here in profusion, and a variety of exogenous shade trees have become an important component part of the primeval forest, rendered almost impenetrable by vines and a dense undergrowth. A carriage-road extends to Fashoda Bridge, well up in the mountains, beyond which it leads up the gorge, past a waterfall which leaps over a rocky rim, where the mountains join to the bed of the stream, six hundred feet below. In different places the romantic mountain road is spanned by graceful arches of

branches of the pauru tree, ambitious to find on the opposite side of the road an independent existence from the parent tree. One of the large, quiet pools below the Fashoda Bridge, a favorite bathing-place for women and their daughters, has been made famous by the writings of Pierre Loti, a French author.

From Fashoda Bridge a bridle path leads up a very steep incline to the French military post in the very heart of the mountains, six thousand feet above the level of the sea. It was here that the natives made their last stand in their war with France. A little beyond the fort rise the crags which compose "the Diadem," a conspicuous landmark in the mountains of Tahiti.

The view from Fashoda Bridge in all directions is inspiring: at the end of the gorge the waterfall dashing over the volcanic rock, pulverized at many points in its descent into silvery spray; the tree-clad mountains on each side with their steeples of bare rock; beneath, the wild mountain stream, speeding to find rest in the quiet basin below; and all around, the rank vegetation which only the tropics under the most favorable conditions can grow, and above, the clear blue sky, brilliantly illuminated by the morning sun. As late as nine o'clock in the forenoon we found everything bathed in a heavy dew, which added much to the beauty and freshness of the incomparable scenery.

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