or a long time watching this party with great
interest, and observed that they fastened the timbers and planks to each
other very much in the same way in which I had seen Jack fasten those of
our little boat. But what surprised me most was its immense length,
which I measured very carefully, and found to be a hundred feet long; and
it was so capacious that it could have held three hundred men. It had
the unwieldy out-rigger and enormously high stern-posts which I had
remarked on the canoe that came to us while I was on the Coral Island.
Observing some boys playing at games a short way along the beach, I
resolved to go and watch them; but as I turned from the natives who were
engaged so busily and cheerfully at their work, I little thought of the
terrible event that hung on the completion of that war-canoe.

Advancing towards the children, who were so numerous that I began to
think this must be the general play-ground of the village, I sat down on
a grassy bank under the shade of a plantain-tree, to watch them. And a
happier or more noisy crew I have never seen. There were at least two
hundred of them, both boys and girls, all of whom were clad in no other
garments than their own glossy little black skins, except the maro, or
strip of cloth round the loins of the boys, and a very short petticoat or
kilt on the girls. They did not all play at the same game, but amused
themselves in different groups.

One band was busily engaged in a game exactly similar to our blind-man's-
buff. Another set were walking on stilts, which raised the children
three feet from the ground. They were very expert at this amusement and
seldom tumbled. In another place I observed a group of girls standing
together, and apparently enjoying themselves very much; so I went up to
see what they were doing, and found that they were opening their eye-lids
with their fingers till their eyes appeared of an enormous size, and then
thrusting pieces of straw between the upper and lower lids, across the
eye-ball, to keep them in that position! This seemed to me, I must
confess, a very foolish as well as dangerous amusement. Nevertheless the
children seemed to be greatly delighted with the hideous faces they made.
I pondered this subject a good deal, and thought that if little children
knew how silly they seem to grown-up people when they make faces, they
would not be so fond of doing it. In another place were a number of boys
engaged in flying kites,