ing
and threatening. But as fear of the sea was unknown to them, they
expressed a will to make the attempt. We launched a large canoe,
and two sturdy natives, relations of Tatini, took the paddles. They
had made the journey more than once, but not at this season.

We got into difficulties from the start. The shores were very different
from those of Mataiea, Papeari, and Vairao, the three districts
I had come through from the house of Tetuanui. The alluvial strip
of land which in them stretched from a quarter of a mile to a mile
from the lagoon to the slopes of the hills, here was cramped to the
barest strip. The huts of the indigenes, few and far apart outside
of Puforatoai, seemed to be set in terraces cut at the foot of the
mountains which rose almost straight from the streak of golden sand
to the skies. In every shade of green, as run by the overhead sun
upon the altering facets of precipice and shelf, of fei and cocoa,
candlenut and purau, giant ferns and convolvulus, tier upon tier,
was a riot of richest vegetation. But everywhere in the lagoon were
bristling and hiding dangers from hummocks of coral and sunken banks.

Our canoe was twenty feet long, and with a very strong outrigger,
but though all four of us paddled, Teta, the chief man of Puforatoai,
in the stern, steering, the vaa labored heavily. Tatini was adept in
canoeing, and with a quartet of hoe we would have ordinarily sent the
vaa spinning through the water; but we were nearing the southernmost
extremity of the Presqu'ile, and the wind and current from the
northeast swept about the broken coast in a confusion of puffs and
blasts, choppy waves and roaring breakers, and made our progress
slow and hazardous. The breeze caught up the foam and formed sheets
of vapor which whipped our faces and blinded us, while an occasional
roller broke on our prow, and soon gave Tatini continuous work in
bailing with a handled scoop.

Opposite the pass of Tutataroa our greatest peril came. The ocean swept
through this narrow channel like a mill-race. The first swell tossed
us up ten feet, and we rode on it fifty before Teta could disengage
us from its clasp, and, without capsizing, divert our course westward
instead of toward the parlous shore. One such jeopardy succeeded
another. We were in a quarter of an hour directly under black and
frowning heights from which a score of cascades and rills leaped
into the air, their masses of water, carried by the gusts, falling
up