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During the voyage out from England I had gone through Dr. Johnson’s dictionary, which had been provided for me marking such words as seemed to me in most common usage in everyday speech. I had then set these down alphabetically—nearly seven thousand in all. My present task was to discover and set down their equivalents in the Indian tongue. I have always loved languages; the study of them has been one of the chief interests of my life, and in my younger days I could pick up a new tongue more readily, perhaps, than most men. If I am blessed with any talent, it is the humble one of the gift of tongues.

The language of Tahiti appealed to me from the first, and with the help of my taio, his daughter, and young Maimiti, I made rapid progress and was soon able to ask simple questions and to understand the replies. It is a strange language and a beautiful one. Like the Greek of Homer, it is rich in words descriptive of the moods of Nature and of human emotions; and, like Greek again, it has in certain respects a precision that our English lacks. To break a bottle is parari; to break a rope, motu; to break a bone, fati. The Indians distinguish with the greatest nicety between the different kinds of fear: fear of a scolding or of being shamed is matan; fear of a dangerous shark or of an assassin, riaria; fear of a spectre must be expressed with still another word. They have innumerable adjectives to express the varying moods of sea and sky. One word describes the boundless sea without land in sight; another the deep blue sea off soundings; another the sea in a calm with a high oily swell. They have a word for the glance which passes between a man and a woman planning an assignation, and another word for the look exchanged by two men plotting to assassinate a third. Their language of the eyes, in fact, is so eloquent and so complete that at times they seem scarcely to need a spoken tongue. They are masters of the downcast eye, the sidelong glance, the direct glance, the raising of the eyebrow, the lift of the chin, and all the pantomime with which they can communicate without those about them being aware of the fact.