kokoo', with other
substantial matters.

She was a genuine busy-body; bustling about the house like a country
landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls tasks
to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into
every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a
prodigious clatter among the calabashes. Sometimes she might have been
seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and
kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle
about as if she would shiver the vessel into fragments; on other
occasions, galloping about the valley in search of a particular kind
of leaf, used in some of her recondite operations, and returning home,
toiling and sweating, with a bundle of it, under which most women would
have sunk.

To tell the truth, Kory-Kory's mother was the only industrious person
in all the valley of Typee; and she could not have employed herself more
actively had she been left an exceedingly muscular and destitute widow,
with an inordinate ate supply of young children, in the bleakest part
of the civilized world. There was not the slightest necessity for the
greater portion of the labour performed by the old lady: but she seemed
to work from some irresistible impulse; her limbs continually swaying to
and fro, as if there were some indefatigable engine concealed within her
body which kept her in perpetual motion.

Never suppose that she was a termagant or a shrew for all this; she had
the kindliest heart in the world, and acted towards me in particular
in a truly maternal manner, occasionally putting some little morsel of
choice food into my hand, some outlandish kind of savage sweetmeat or
pastry, like a doting mother petting a sickly urchin with tarts
and sugar plums. Warm indeed are my remembrances of the dear, good,
affectionate old Tinor!

Besides the individuals I have mentioned, there belonged to the
household three young men, dissipated, good-for-nothing, roystering
blades of savages, who were either employed in prosecuting love affairs
with the maidens of the tribe, or grew boozy on 'arva' and tobacco in
the company of congenial spirits, the scapegraces of the valley.

Among the permanent inmates of the house were likewise several lovely
damsels, who instead of thrumming pianos and reading novels, like
more enlightened young ladies, substituted for these employments the
manufacture of a fine species of tappa;