and, under the highest
grove of trees, a few houses sparkled white--Rotoava, the metropolitan
settlement of the Paumotus. Hither we beat in three tacks, and came to
an anchor close in shore, in the first smooth water since we had left
San Francisco, five fathoms deep, where a man might look overboard all
day at the vanishing cable, the coral patches, and the many-coloured
fish.

Fakarava was chosen to be the seat of Government from nautical
considerations only. It is eccentrically situate; the productions, even
for a low island, poor; the population neither many nor--for Low
Islanders--industrious. But the lagoon has two good passages, one to
leeward, one to windward, so that in all states of the wind it can be
left and entered, and this advantage, for a government of scattered
islands, was decisive. A pier of coral, landing-stairs, a harbour light
upon a staff and pillar, and two spacious Government bungalows in a
handsome fence, give to the northern end of Rotoava a great air of
consequence. This is confirmed on the one hand by an empty prison, on
the other by a gendarmerie pasted over with handbills in Tahitian,
land-law notices from Papeete, and republican sentiments from Paris,
signed (a little after date) "Jules Grevy, _Perihidente_." Quite at the
far end a belfried Catholic chapel concludes the town; and between, on a
smooth floor of white coral sand and under the breezy canopy of
coco-palms, the houses of the natives stand irregularly scattered, now
close on the lagoon for the sake of the breeze, now back under the palms
for love of shadow.

Not a soul was to be seen. But for the thunder of the surf on the far
side, it seemed you might have heard a pin drop anywhere about that
capital city. There was something thrilling in the unexpected silence,
something yet more so in the unexpected sound. Here before us a sea
reached to the horizon, rippling like an inland mere; and, behold! close
at our back another sea assaulted with assiduous fury the reverse of the
position. At night the lantern was run up and lit a vacant pier. In one
house lights were seen and voices heard, where the population (I was
told) sat playing cards. A little beyond, from deep in the darkness of
the palm grove, we saw the glow and smelt the aromatic odour of a coal
of cocoa-nut husk, a relic of the evening kitchen. Crickets sang; some
shrill thing whistled in a tuft of weeds; and the mosquito hummed and
stung. There was no other trace that n