rs, all calculated to secure our safety and
advance the interests of our Mission work. He then invited all the
Chiefs to go on board and see his vessel. They were taken to see the
Armory, and the sight of the big guns running so easily on rails vastly
astonished them. He then placed them round us on deck and showed them
two shells discharged towards the ocean, at which, as they burst and
fell far off, splash--splashing into the water, the terror of the
Natives visibly increased. But, when he sent a large ball crashing
through a cocoanut grove, breaking the trees like straws and cutting its
way clear and swift, they were quite dumfounded and pled to be again set
safely on shore. After receiving each some small gift, however, they
were reconciled to the situation, and returned immensely interested in
all that they had seen. Doubtless many a wild romance was spun by these
savage heads, in trying to describe and hand down to others the wonders
of the fire-god of the sea, and the Captain of the great white Queen.
How easily it all lends itself to the service of poetry and myth!

CHAPTER XIX.
"NOBLE OLD ABRAHAM."

FEVER and ague had now attacked me fourteen times severely, with
slighter recurring attacks almost continuously after my first three
months on the island, and I now felt the necessity of taking the hint of
the Tannese Chief before referred to--"Sleep on the higher ground."
Having also received medical counsel to the same effect, though indeed
experience was painfully sufficient testimony, I resolved to remove my
house, and began to look about for a suitable site. There rose behind my
present site, a hill about two hundred feet high, surrounded on all
sides by a valley, and swept by the breezes of the trade-winds, being
only separated from the ocean by a narrow neck of land. On this I had
set my heart; there was room for a Mission House and a Church, for which
indeed Nature seemed to have adapted it. I proceeded to buy up every
claim by the Natives to any portion of the hill, paying each publicly
and in turn, so that there might be no trouble afterwards. I then
purchased from a Trader the deck planks of a shipwrecked vessel, with
which to construct a house of two apartments, a bedroom and a small
store-room adjoining it, to which I purposed to transfer and add the old
house as soon as I was able.

Just at this juncture, the fever smote me again more severely than ever;
my weakness after this attack was so grea