o rub noses, and with a present for his handsome wife
stowed in the capacious shirt, we shook hands, and away he paddled on
shore. This was the last we saw of Arupeii.

The frigate was always, Sundays excepted, surrounded by canoes filled
with the natives, and they must have made a golden harvest, to judge
from the immense quantities of fruits constantly coming over the
gangways--so great was the demand for cocoanuts, that they were rafted
off from the shore in strings, like water-casks. The canoes were
awkwardly hewn out of rough logs, with ill-arranged, misshapen
outriggers; quite unlike the buoyant, swift little water vehicles of the
Sandwich Islanders.

One day, attended by a tidy little reefer, we hired a clumsy, crazy
equipage, with a copper and indigo-colored monster in the stern to
paddle us about the reef and harbor. It was low water, and as our canoe
drew but an inch or two of water outside--she was half-full inside--we
were able to skim over the shallowest parts; and, by the by, there is a
strange anomaly in the tides of Papeetee, which are not in the least
influenced by the moon--there are many ways of accounting for it--I only
speak of the fact--we ever found a full sea at twelve, and low water at
six.

In many places, a few feet below the surface, we glided over what seemed
the most exquisite submarine flower-gardens, corals of all colors, and
of every imaginable shape--plant, sprig, and branching antlers--of
purple, blue, white, and yellow--variegated star and shell fish, and
narrow clear blue chasms and fissures of unfathomable depths between;
but what was equally beautiful to behold, schools of superbly-colored
fishes swimming and darting about in the high blue rollers as raising
their snowy crests just before breaking upon the outer wall of the reef,
the finny tribes were held in a transparent medium, like that seen
through a crystal vase.

A heavy shower interrupted our aquatic researches, and we sought shelter
on Pomaree's diminutive island of Motuuata. It hardly covers an acre,
but is a most charming retreat beneath the drooping foliage, and I did
not wonder at the jolly queen's taste. She never goes there now: the
_Franees_ were busy with pick and barrow on parapet and bastion;
blacksmiths and artizans were hammering away at the forges, and, beneath
the trees and sheds, soldiers and sailors were munching long rolls of
bread and drinking red wine. Who can wonder that the poor Queen has
forsaken