Shocked!

When the Tourist Era Startled Tahiti

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Apr. 16.

THE cartoon entitled “This Tourist Traffic” in the January issue of the Pacific Islands Monthly has awakened grievous memories of sights our own eyes beheld during the Tourist Era at Papeete.

In the innocent days of our youth that sanctum sanctorum - the feminine form divine —was concealed from the profane by veils within veils and spoken of only through the lofty medium of poetry or represented in the epic sculpture of a Phidias. The fleeting glimpse of a dainty foot peeping modestly from beneath those ample draperies or the flash of a well turned ankle in the tumult of a waltz, would send us home to write sonnets such as we should be inspired to compose to a violet seen in the woodland dell or an orchid in a tropical paradise.

Then dawned the New Era, and with its coming the veils of Isis were torn

from the sanctuary. We had only read about it; but we did not know the ghastly reality until the tourist ships began to empty themselves on the shores of Tahiti.

What we saw curdled our blood: eye browless masks as void of expression as w r ax images in the museum of Madame Toussard; gory talons that seemed to have been but lately tearing quivering flesh at some abattoir; broad expanses of dorsal epidermis of colour and texture not good to see.

All this was bad enough. But what shocked us beyond endurance and com pleted our disillusionment were those nether members which, when we were young, were not even named, but were mentioned only by poetic allusion to those classic perfections of symmetry and beauty: The Doric, lonic, and Corinthian.

What met our horrified gaze, in the streets of Papeete, banished all thoughts of classic arts. The Muse of Poetry blushed and departed in precipitant flight; the shade of Phidias ground its teeth and faded into the void.

The only things we could think of as fitting comparisons were the supports of grand pianos, obelisks, and the front legs of giraffes.

Happily, all that is now past. The highways of Tahiti are populated only by the modestly attired daughters of Polynesia whose flawless, unpainted com plexions, and graceful carriage reassure us that the charms of femininity have not altogether departed from the world.

The discontinuance of passenger steam ers has caused us the greatest possible inconvenience. Our mails now are un certain, and our incomes are diminished.

But we are bearing these things, however, with staunch fortitude for we have this compensation: our eyeballs will be seared no more by such fearsome sights!