Explore "My Tahiti" by Robert Dean Frisbie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The land Mauu sold me was only a few fathoms wide on the beach; but it ran mountainward through a jungle of lemon, hibiscus, island chestnuts, and coconut groves. The house was of bamboo and coconut thatch. Facing the lagoon, it seemed to work its way into the jungle until it was difficult to tell where the house ended and the jungle began. A few coconuts leaned seaward on either side of my native mansion; there were clumps of bananas, and between the house and the beach a bountiful alligator pear that broke the full force of the trade wind.
Though no one, white or native, lived on that stretch of beach, I could see my brown neighbors fishing patiently in their strange ways, unmindful of the hot sun. Day after day I watched them from my verandah, lazily, sleepily, only half aware that they were there at all, until one of them, hooking a big fish, startled me with his high yodeling call. Then there would be a moment's animation, and if Tuahu was there he would lean forward to watch the fisherman hauling in his line, and to speculate on what kind of finned thing had got foul of the hook.