eep out the intrusive sun.

*White appears to be the sacred colour among the Marquesans.

On all sides as you approached this silent spot you caught sight of the
dead chief's effigy, seated in the stern of a canoe, which was raised on
a light frame a few inches above the level of the pi-pi. The canoe was
about seven feet in length; of a rich, dark coloured wood, handsomely
carved and adorned in many places with variegated bindings of stained
sinnate, into which were ingeniously wrought a number of sparkling
seashells, and a belt of the same shells ran all round it. The body
of the figure--of whatever material it might have been made--was
effectually concealed in a heavy robe of brown tappa, revealing; only
the hands and head; the latter skilfully carved in wood, and surmounted
by a superb arch of plumes. These plumes, in the subdued and gentle
gales which found access to this sequestered spot, were never for one
moment at rest, but kept nodding and waving over the chief's brow. The
long leaves of the palmetto drooped over the eaves, and through them you
saw the warrior holding his paddle with both hands in the act of rowing,
leaning forward and inclining his head, as if eager to hurry on his
voyage. Glaring at him forever, and face to face, was a polished human
skull, which crowned the prow of the canoe. The spectral figurehead,
reversed in its position, glancing backwards, seemed to mock the
impatient attitude of the warrior.

When I first visited this singular place with Kory-Kory, he told me--or
at least I so understood him--that the chief was paddling his way to
the realms of bliss, and bread-fruit--the Polynesian heaven--where
every moment the bread-fruit trees dropped their ripened spheres to the
ground, and where there was no end to the cocoanuts and bananas: there
they reposed through the livelong eternity upon mats much finer than
those of Typee; and every day bathed their glowing limbs in rivers
of cocoanut oil. In that happy land there were plenty of plumes and
feathers, and boars'-tusks and sperm-whale teeth, far preferable to all
the shining trinkets and gay tappa of the white men; and, best of all,
women far lovelier than the daughters of earth were there in abundance.
'A very pleasant place,' Kory-Kory said it was; 'but after all, not much
pleasanter, he thought, than Typee.' 'Did he not then,' I asked him,
'wish to accompany the warrior?' 'Oh no: he was very happy where he was;
but supposed that some t