ut the minas can fly, and,
when threatened, lazily lifted themselves a few feet out of reach of
the bills, and returned when danger was over.

The chief's plantation extended from the sea to the mountain,
altogether about ten acres, which in Tahiti is a good-sized single
holding. Cocoanuts, breadfruit, limes, oranges, badamiers, mangoes,
and other trees made a dense forest, and a hectare or more was planted
with vanilla-vines that grew on the false coffee of which hedges were
usually made. A hundred yards away a stream meandered toward the sea,
and there women of the household sat and washed clothes.

They had no taro planted, though there was much about. Taro, the
staple food of Hawaiians, either simply boiled or fermented as poi,
was not a decided favorite in Tahiti. The natives thought it tasteless
compared with the fei, so rich in color and flavor. The taro is a lily
(Arum), and its great bulbs are the edible part, though the tops of
small taro-plants are delicious, surpassing spinach, and we had them
often on our table.

Our customary meals at eleven and at six were of raw oysters,
shrimp, crabs, craw-fish, or lobsters; fish of many kinds, chicken,
breadfruit, vi-apples stewed, bananas, oranges, feis, cocoanuts,
and sucking pigs. The family ate sitting or squatting on the ground,
but I had a table and silver, glass and linen. It is the way of the
Tahitian. The big house, well furnished, was not inhabited by the
chief's family. It was their monument of success. They slept in one
of several houses they had near by, and their elegant dishes were
unused except for white guests.

On the beach at the river's mouth the heron sat or stalked solemnly,
and the tern flew about the reef. The white iitae lived about the
cocoanut-trees.

From the broad veranda in front was a view of the sea, and all day
and night the breakers beat upon the reef a mile away, now as soft
as the summer wind in the lime-trees of Seville, and again loud as
winter in the giant pine forests of Michigan. The fleecy surf gleamed
and shimmered in the sun as it rolled over the coral dam, and when the
sea was strong, there was another sound, the lapping of the waves on
the sand a hundred yards from me. A little wharf had been built there
by the Government, and a schooner arrived and departed every few days,
with people and produce.

I ate alone mostly, at a table on the veranda in front of my chamber,
waited on by Tatini, a very lovely and shy maide