NDERS--REFLECTIONS--MISERABLE SUBTERFUGE OF THE FRENCH--DIGRESSION
CONCERNING TAHITI--SEIZURE OF THE ISLAND BY THE ADMIRAL--SPIRITED
CONDUCT OF AN ENGLISH LADY

IT was in the summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands; the French
had then held possession of them for several weeks. During this time
they had visited some of the principal places in the group, and had
disembarked at various points about five hundred troops. These were
employed in constructing works of defence, and otherwise providing
against the attacks of the natives, who at any moment might be expected
to break out in open hostility. The islanders looked upon the people who
made this cavalier appropriation of their shores with mingled feelings
of fear and detestation. They cordially hated them; but the impulses
of their resentment were neutralized by their dread of the floating
batteries, which lay with their fatal tubes ostentatiously pointed,
not at fortifications and redoubts, but at a handful of bamboo sheds,
sheltered in a grove of cocoanuts! A valiant warrior doubtless, but
a prudent one too, was this same Rear-Admiral Du Petit Thouars. Four
heavy, doublebanked frigates and three corvettes to frighten a parcel of
naked heathen into subjection! Sixty-eight pounders to demolish huts of
cocoanut boughs, and Congreve rockets to set on fire a few canoe sheds!

At Nukuheva, there were about one hundred soldiers ashore. They were
encamped in tents, constructed of the old sails and spare spars of
the squadron, within the limits of a redoubt mounted with a few
nine-pounders, and surrounded with a fosse. Every other day, these
troops were marched out in martial array, to a level piece of ground
in the vicinity, and there for hours went through all sorts of military
evolutions, surrounded by flocks of the natives, who looked on with
savage admiration at the show, and as savage a hatred of the actors.
A regiment of the Old Guard, reviewed on a summer's day in the Champs
Elysees, could not have made a more critically correct appearance. The
officers' regimentals, resplendent with gold lace and embroidery as if
purposely calculated to dazzle the islanders, looked as if just unpacked
from their Parisian cases.

The sensation produced by the presence of the strangers had not in the
least subsided at the period of our arrival at the islands. The natives
still flocked in numbers about the encampment, and watched with the
liveliest curiosity everything that was g