the water, beneath the shades
of the overhanging thickets. Fayaway and I reclined in the stern of
the canoe, on the very best terms possible with one another; the gentle
nymph occasionally placing her pipe to her lip, and exhaling the mild
fumes of the tobacco, to which her rosy breath added a fresh perfume.
Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful
female appears to more advantage than in the act of smoking. How
captivating is a Peruvian lady, swinging in her gaily-woven hammock of
grass, extended between two orange-trees, and inhaling the fragrance of
a choice cigarro!

But Fayaway, holding in her delicately formed olive hand the long yellow
reed of her pipe, with its quaintly carved bowl, and every few moments
languishingly giving forth light wreaths of vapour from her mouth and
nostrils, looked still more engaging.

We floated about thus for several hours, when I looked up to the warm,
glowing, tropical sky, and then down into the transparent depths below;
and when my eye, wandering from the bewitching scenery around, fell upon
the grotesquely-tattooed form of Kory-Kory, and finally, encountered the
pensive gaze of Fayaway, I thought I had been transported to some fairy
region, so unreal did everything appear.

This lovely piece of water was the coolest spot in all the valley, and I
now made it a place of continual resort during the hottest period of
the day. One side of it lay near the termination of a long gradually
expanding gorge, which mounted to the heights that environed the vale.
The strong trade wind, met in its course by these elevations, circled
and eddied about their summits, and was sometimes driven down the
steep ravine and swept across the valley, ruffling in its passage the
otherwise tranquil surface of the lake.

One day, after we had been paddling about for some time, I disembarked
Kory-Kory, and paddled the canoe to the windward side of the lake. As
I turned the canoe, Fayaway, who was with me, seemed all at once to be
struck with some happy idea. With a wild exclamation of delight, she
disengaged from her person the ample robe of tappa which was knotted
over her shoulder (for the purpose of shielding her from the sun), and
spreading it out like a sail, stood erect with upraised arms in the head
of the canoe. We American sailors pride ourselves upon our straight,
clean spars, but a prettier little mast than Fayaway made was never
shipped aboard of any craft.

I