a minute at a time.
Once or twice it made wry faces at swallowing a mouthful of water, and
choked a spluttered as if on the point of strangling. At such times
however, the mother snatched it up and by a process scarcely to be
mentioned obliged it to eject the fluid. For several weeks afterwards
I observed this woman bringing her child down to the stream regularly
every day, in the cool of the morning and evening and treating it to a
bath. No wonder that the South Sea Islanders are so amphibious a race,
when they are thus launched into the water as soon as they see the
light. I am convinced that it is as natural for a human being to swim as
it is for a duck. And yet in civilized communities how many able-bodied
individuals die, like so many drowning kittens, from the occurrence of
the most trivial accidents!

. . . . . . . .

The long luxuriant and glossy tresses of the Typee damsels often
attracted my admiration. A fine head of hair is the pride and joy of
every woman's heart. Whether against the express will of Providence, it
is twisted upon the crown of the head and there coiled away like a rope
on a ship's deck; whether it be stuck behind the ears and hangs down
like the swag of a small window-curtain; or whether it be permitted to
flow over the shoulders in natural ringlets, it is always the pride of
the owner, and the glory of the toilette.

The Typee girls devote much of their time to the dressing of their fair
and redundant locks. After bathing, as they sometimes do five or six
times every day, the hair is carefully dried, and if they have been in
the sea, invariably washed in fresh water, and anointed with a highly
scented oil extracted from the meat of the cocoanut. This oil is
obtained in great abundance by the following very simple process:

A large vessel of wood, with holes perforated in the bottom, is filled
with the pounded meat, and exposed to the rays of the sun. As the
oleaginous matter exudes, it falls in drops through the apertures into a
wide-mouthed calabash placed underneath. After a sufficient quantity has
thus been collected, the oil undergoes a purifying process, and is then
poured into the small spherical shells of the nuts of the moo-tree,
which are hollowed out to receive it. These nuts are then hermetically
sealed with a resinous gum, and the vegetable fragrance of their green
rind soon imparts to the oil a delightful odour. After the lapse of a
few weeks the exterior shell of