and the natives resident there, to the
number of forty, had all been armed with bows and arrows, that they
might be prepared to repel possible incursions of apes from that part of
West Island, the channel at that point being but little wider than that
which the apes were wont to swim when crossing from their own island.

The liability to incursions by the apes seemed to be the only source of
anxiety on the part of Bowata and his people. In all other respects
they appeared to be perfectly happy; for their wants were few, and so
fertile was the soil of their own island that it amply supplied all
those wants, with very little exertion on the part of the easy-going
inhabitants. The trouble was that the products of their industry
unfortunately appealed so strongly to the appetite of the anthropoids
that, to gratify it, the brutes were willing to swim a channel a mile
wide. And the trouble was serious enough, in all conscience, for--as I
gradually learned, in the course of frequent conversations with the
chief--the apes not only destroyed far more than they ate, but, until my
introduction of the bow and arrow as a weapon, they were only driven off
with the utmost difficulty, and frequently with serious loss of life on
the part of the savages. It was indeed to put an effectual end to those
frequent raids upon their property that the natives, in desperation, had
finally resorted to the drastic measure of setting fire to the island
that harboured the monsters.

The longer I meditated upon the problem of how to meet the shortage of
material for the completion of the cutter the more reluctant did I
become to resort to so extreme a measure as the breaking up of the
sailing boat, still more the bungalow, to supply the deficiency. In my
perplexity I visited East Island, and here a possible way out of the
difficulty was suggested to me by the discovery--as I then for the first
time particularly noticed--that certain of the trees flourishing on that
island appeared to be if not actually cedars at least a species very
nearly akin thereto. And if upon closer investigation this should prove
to be the case, here was a supply of timber admirably suited to my
requirements and ample beyond my utmost needs. It was a matter worthy
of my most particular attention; and accordingly I selected a group of
the supposed cedars, and forthwith proceeded to operate upon them. They
were three in number, of just about the right size for my require