lent spot, you caught sight of the
dead chief's effigy, seated in the stern of a canoe, which was raised on a
light frame a few inches above the level of the pi-pi. The canoe was about
seven feet in length; of a rich, dark-coloured wood, handsomely carved,
and adorned in many places with variegated bindings of stained sinnate,
into which were ingeniously wrought a number of sparkling sea-shells, and
a belt of the same shells ran all round it. The body of the figure--of
whatever material it might have been made--was effectually concealed in a
heavy robe of brown tappa, revealing only the hands and head; the latter
skilfully carved in wood, and surmounted by a superb arch of plumes. These
plumes, in the subdued and gentle gales which found access to this
sequestered spot, were never for one moment at rest, but kept nodding and
waving over the chief's brow. The long leaves of the palmetto dropped over
the eaves, and through them you saw the warrior, holding his paddle with
both hands in the act of rowing, leaning forward and inclining his head,
as if eager to hurry on his voyage. Glaring at him for ever, and face to
face, was a polished human skull, which crowned the prow of the canoe. The
spectral figure-head, reversed in its position, glancing backwards, seemed
to mock the impatient attitude of the warrior.

When I first visited this singular place with Kory-Kory, he told me--or, at
least, I so understood him--that the chief was paddling his way to the
realms of bliss and bread-fruit--the Polynesian heaven--where every moment
the bread-fruit trees dropped their ripened spheres to the ground, and
where there was no end to the cocoa-nuts and bananas; there they reposed
through the live-long eternity upon mats much finer than those of Typee;
and every day bathed their glowing limbs in rivers of cocoa-nut oil. In
that happy land there were plenty of plumes and feathers, and boars'-tusks
and sperm-whale teeth, far preferable to all the shining trinkets and gay
tappa of the white men; and, best of all, women, far lovelier than the
daughters of earth, were there in abundance. "A very pleasant place,"
Kory-Kory said it was; "but, after all, not much pleasanter, he thought,
than Typee." "Did he not, then," I asked him, "wish to accompany the
warrior?" "Oh, no; he was very happy where he was; but supposed that some
time or other he would go in his own canoe."

Thus far, I think, I clearly comprehended Kory-Kory. But there was a
si