mission to land met with a prompt refusal, and with their disappearance the curtain falls upon the first scene of the drama.
The second opens when on August 29, 1838, the French frigate Venus, under Commodore DuPetit-Thouars, bore down upon Papeete, and, training her guns upon the town, demanded first an apology, second 2,000 Spanish dollars, and third a salute of twenty-one guns for the French flag.
The native sources of money-revenue were derived largely from washing done for ships, of which employment Her Majesty and the high chiefs enjoyed a monopoly, and the hopelessness of attempting to pay this enormous indemnity was so overpowering that in her despair the Queen is said to have advised the ceding of the entire Island to the French.
Even had the town been shelled, retreat to the hillsides would have given the natives hardly more concern than in the days of Wallis, but it was far otherwise with the English residents, who, moreover, were already scheming for a British protectorate. Thus the foreign residents came to the aid of the Queen and the indemnity was promptly paid, the French, however, being obliged to provide the powder used to salute their own flag, for, as Mr. Pritchard states in his "Polynesian Reminiscences," upon the entire Island there was not sufficient powder for more than five of the twenty-one shots required.[1]
The French Commodore then demanded a treaty by virtue of which Frenchmen of all professions were to be permitted to establish themselves upon Tahiti; and after obliging the Queen to accept a French Consul of his own choosing, the Venus sailed away.
Most unwisely, immediately after the departure of the Venus, the Queen, instigated by Pritchard and the missionaries, issued a law forbidding the teaching of Roman Catholic doctrines in Tahiti; when, like a bird of ill omen, another frigate L'Artemise rose above the horizon, but in approaching the island she struck so heavily upon the coral reef that had it not been for native aid in towing her into Papeete Harbor she would have sunk. No sooner were her injuries repaired, however, than her captain, running out his guns, demanded equal rights for both Catholics and Protestants, and the cession of a site for a Roman Catholic church. Soon after this in 1841 the chiefs of the old conservative party applied to France for protection; the Queen, instigated by Pritchard, having already addressed a similar appeal to England.[2]
A semblance of peace then fell upon the scene and for several years
- ↑ This event is depicted in Plate No. 53 accompanying the "Voyage autour du monde" by A. DuPetit-Thouars, Paris, 1841.
- ↑ Great Britain responded by a pleasing but non-commital letter, and a gift to the queen of some household furniture, which through an irony of fate arrived just in time to be of service to Bruat, the first French Governor.
