ly furniture. We saw three women, one very
old, with nothing but a palm-leaf mat as a covering, the others
dressed in the apparently universal costume, consisting of a long
bright-coloured gown, put into a yoke at the shoulders, and flowing
thence loosely to the ground, which completely conceals the wearer's
form, even to the tips of her toes. I think these dresses must come
from England or America, for they are evidently machine-made, and the
cotton-stuft of which they are composed has the most extraordinary
patterns printed on it I ever saw. Cherry and white, dark blue and
yellow or white stripes, red with yellow spots, and blue with yellow
crosses, appear to be the favourite designs. The women seemed gentle
and kind, and were delighted with some beads, looking-glasses, and
knives I gave them, in return for which they brought us quantities of
beautiful shells.

We saw the large iron knee of a vessel in one spot during our walk,
and wondered how it came there. In another place we saw a canoe in
process of construction, ingeniously made of boards, sewed together
with plaited palm-leaves. The canoes in use here are very high, long,
and narrow, and are only kept from upsetting by means of a tremendous
outrigger, consisting of a log fastened to the extremity of two bent
pieces of wood, projecting sideways from each end of the boat. The
only animals we met with in our ramble were four pigs and a few
chickens, and no other live stock of any kind was visible. No attempt
seemed to be made at the cultivation of the ground; and I think, if
there had been, we must have observed it, for our party separated and
walked a good distance in various directions.

The natives made us understand that on the other side of the entrance
to the lagoon, in the better sort of house we had noticed, there
resided a white man. He did not, however, make his appearance during
our visit, and I imagine he must have been one of those individuals
called 'beach-combers,' referred to in so many of the books that treat
of the South Sea Islands,--a sort of ne'er-do-well Englishman or
American, rather afraid of meeting any of his own countrymen, but very
clever at making a bargain between a ship's crew and the natives, with
considerable profit to himself.

Among the bushes we found numbers of large hermit-crabs, crawling, or
rather running, about in whelk shells, half a dozen of them
occasionally having a grand fight amongst themselves. We picked up at
le