out the
lower branches, which were soon turned into wreaths or necklaces.

Advancing inland, the lateral valleys converged into one deep gorge,
closing perpendicularly on either hand; and further on, the stream
itself was cut off by a bold, transverse acclivity between the two
sides, like a wall of masonry, more than half way up the lofty shafts
that framed the gorge. From this shelf, more than a thousand feet above
us, there came leaping a thin thread of water--but long before reaching
the base of the grassy barrier, it was diffused in showers of spray, and
poured its sparkling tribute into the deep chasms of the valley.

Leaving the lower bed of the stream, we began mounting upward by a
zig-zag pathway, cut lately by the French on the flat, sheer face of the
mountain. It was at this point, where at an immense height above, the
Tahitians had poised vast masses of rocks, with levers ready pointed, to
hurl death and destruction on the adventurous soldiers who should dare
to attack their stronghold. The natives were posted at the head of the
pass, upon an acclivity, with no other approach from below than a
crumbling goat-path, where the road now leads. They were well provided
with arms and ammunition, cartridges charged at both ends, to prevent
mistakes, and kindly furnished, it is said, by foreign ships of war in
port at the time. Indeed, the French during the last year of the war,
were harrassed night and day. Alarm-fires were blazing on every hill,
feints were made upon the town, and the neighboring posts, until the
troops became worn out, and more than half ill in hospital. Nor were the
French so successful in their different engagements as the superior arms
and discipline of trained soldiers would imply; for in one affair at
Ta-a-a-a, they had fifty slain.

Thus the Tahitians, believing themselves invincible, after a thirteen
month's siege, were at last dislodged through the connivance of a
traitor, who guided their enemies up a narrow ravine, when, after
surmounting almost inaccessible precipices, by the aid of
scaling-ladders and ropes, they succeeded in attaining a foothold on a
sharp spur of the peaks above the pass, and then rushing down completely
surprised and captured the native camp. To the humanity of the French be
it said, every soul was spared. This was the last struggle: tired of
subsisting on roots and berries, enveloped in mists and rain, the
natives sighing once more for their smiling homes by the s