med, nothing in his life ever
caused him so much regret as the leaving such fine creatures to be lost in
that country."

Some of the natives present at the Feast of Calabashes had displayed a few
articles of European dress, disposed, however, about their persons after
their own peculiar fashion. Among these I perceived the two pieces of
cotton cloth which poor Toby and myself had bestowed upon our youthful
guides the afternoon we entered the valley. They were evidently reserved
for gala days; and during those of the festival they rendered the young
islanders who wore them very distinguished characters. The small number
who were similarly adorned, and the great value they appeared to place
upon the most common and most trivial articles, furnished ample evidence
of the very restricted intercourse they held with vessels touching at the
island. A few cotton handkerchiefs of a gay pattern, tied about the neck,
and suffered to fall over the shoulders, strips of fanciful calico,
swathed about the loins, were nearly all I saw.

Indeed, throughout the valley, there were few things of any kind to be
seen of European origin. All I ever saw, besides the articles just alluded
to, were the six muskets preserved in the Ti, and three or four similar
implements of warfare hung up in other houses, some small canvas bags,
partly filled with bullets and powder, and half a dozen old hatchet-heads,
with the edges blunted and battered to such a degree as to render them
utterly worthless. These last seemed to be regarded as nearly worthless by
the natives; and several times they held up one of them before me, and
throwing it aside with a gesture of disgust, manifested their contempt for
anything that could so soon become unserviceable.

But the muskets, the powder, and the bullets, were held in most
extravagant esteem. The former, from their great age and the peculiarities
they exhibited, were well worthy a place in any antiquarian's armoury. I
remember, in particular, one that hung in the Ti, and which
Mehevi--supposing as a matter of course that I was able to repair it--had
put into my hands for that purpose. It was one of those clumsy,
old-fashioned English pieces known generally as Tower Hill muskets, and,
for aught I know, might have been left on the island by Wallace, Carteret,
Cook, or Vancouver. The stock was half-rotten and worm-eaten; the lock was
as rusty and about as well adapted to its ostensible purpose as an old
door-hinge; th