work of washing away the softer rocks, leaving imposing pinnacles of hard basalt such as the sheer precipice Maiao, "The Diadem," at the head of Fautaua valley which lifts its unconquered crest thousands of feet above the soft corroding lavas of the lowlands.
In other places the valleys are spanned by dykes of basalt forming precipices over which the mountain torrents dash in a multitude of graceful cataracts.
The seductive charm of Tahiti is all its own for everywhere the beautiful is wedded to the grand. The stern crags are but nestling places for the mosses of the forest, and fascinated by the sylvan setting of the waterfall where rainbows float on mists among the tree ferns; the roar of the cataract is unperceived; and the coral reefs and shaded shores of fair Tahiti, who can forget them—the glorious sparkle of sunbeams playing over flickering ripples in a riot of turquoise, emerald, and blue is the setting of every picture—the background of every memory. Indeed, it is not where the peaks are highest that Tahiti is loveliest for nowhere in the Pacific do the mountains meet the sea in fairer grace of form and color than at Tautira on the eastern coast of Tahiti-iti. The charmed memory of Tahiti lives only to die with the beholder.
In the Hawaiian or the Tongan Islands, cup-shaped craters constantly remind one of the volcanic origin of the land, but the erosion due to ages of tropical showers has all but obliterated these in Tahiti although the broad concavity in the upper region of Papenoo valley may possibly mark the site of the great central crater of Tahiti-uni.
Nestled under the southeastern rim of this crumbling crater lies the gem of Tahiti, the lovely lake Vaihiria, in a setting of wild bananas,
