ned.

At last the wrath of the chief evaporated, and in a few moments he
was as placid as ever. Laying his hand upon his breast, he gave me to
understand that his name was 'Mehevi', and that, in return, he wished me
to communicate my appellation. I hesitated for an instant, thinking that
it might be difficult for him to pronounce my real name, and then with
the most praiseworthy intentions intimated that I was known as 'Tom'.
But I could not have made a worse selection; the chief could not master
it. 'Tommo,' 'Tomma', 'Tommee', everything but plain 'Tom'. As he
persisted in garnishing the word with an additional syllable, I
compromised the matter with him at the word 'Tommo'; and by that name
I went during the entire period of my stay in the valley. The same
proceeding was gone through with Toby, whose mellifluous appellation was
more easily caught.

An exchange of names is equivalent to a ratification of good will and
amity among these simple people; and as we were aware of this fact, we
were delighted that it had taken place on the present occasion.

Reclining upon our mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving audience
to successive troops of the natives, who introduced themselves to us by
pronouncing their respective names, and retired in high good humour on
receiving ours in return. During this ceremony the greatest merriment
prevailed nearly every announcement on the part of the islanders being
followed by a fresh sally of gaiety, which induced me to believe that
some of them at least were innocently diverting the company at our
expense, by bestowing upon themselves a string of absurd titles, of the
humour of which we were of course entirely ignorant.

All this occupied about an hour, when the throng having a little
diminished, I turned to Mehevi and gave him to understand that we were
in need of food and sleep. Immediately the attentive chief addressed a
few words to one of the crowd, who disappeared, and returned in a few
moments with a calabash of 'poee-poee', and two or three young cocoanuts
stripped of their husks, and with their shells partly broken. We both
of us forthwith placed one of these natural goblets to our lips, and
drained it in a moment of the refreshing draught it contained. The
poee-poee was then placed before us, and even famished as I was, I
paused to consider in what manner to convey it to my mouth.

This staple article of food among the Marquese islanders is manufactured
from the produc