My Tahiti by Robert Dean Frisbie — Read

A young man feels intensely the glamour of his first strange port, no matter how squalid it may be. But Papeete was not squalid in those days, nor is it now, though it has changed greatly since I first stepped ashore, young, alive to the picturesque and the unusual.

I left my suitcases in the customs shed and wandered for an hour through the town. The strangeness of the place delighted me; I felt that at last I was breaking into a land of adventure that is forbidden to all save a fortunate few. I saw traders in white drill suits and cork helmets; native women in long, flowing Mother Hubbards and yellow straw hats; many Chinamen, like greasy fat spiders, behind their counters, bargaining shrewdly with equally shrewd natives; and the old-fashioned carriages, shays, surreys, spring wagons, filled with natives from the country districts, the women all but lost in innumerable folds of calico and fathoms of ribbon, and great hats with ruffles and streamers and plaited affairs; the men stiff and self-conscious in their tightly fitting black coats and white trousers. In some of the shops I could hear accordions playing and, on glancing through the doorways, see many natives lounging about bottle-littered tables, and Tahitian girls dancing. But still these people were unreal: they belonged to the volumes of Stevenson and Melville rather than to the scenes of actual life.