Port Lele, they still manifest the same
superstitious dread of the eel as in their days of heathendom. I well
remember witnessing an instance of this terror during my sojourn on the
island when I was shipwrecked there in 1874. I had taken up my residence
in the picturesque little village of Leasse, on the western or "lee"
side, when I was one evening visited by several of the ship's company--a
Fijian half-caste, a white man, and two natives of Pleasant Island. At
the moment they arrived I was in the house of the native pastor--a
man who had received an excellent education in a missionary college at
Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands--instructing him and his family in the
art of making _taka_, or cinnet sandals, as practised by the natives
of the Tokelau Group. Just then the four seamen entered, each man
triumphantly holding up a large eel: in an instant there was a united
howl of horror from the parson and his family, as they made a rash for
the door, overturning the lamp and nearly setting the house on fire. In
vain I followed and urged them to return, and told them that the men had
gone away and taken the _toan_ with them--nothing would induce them to
enter the house that night, and the whole family slept elsewhere.

One singular thing about the eels on Strong's Island is that they
hibernate, in a fashion, on the sides or even summits of the high
mountains, at an altitude of nearly two thousand feet. Selecting, or
perhaps making, a depression in the soft, moss-covered soil, the ugly
creatures fit themselves into it compactly and remain there for weeks or
even months at a time. I have counted as many as thirty of these holes,
all tenanted, within a few square yards. Some were quite concealed by
vegetable _debris_ or moss, others were exposed to view, with the broad,
flat head of the slippery occupant resting on the margin or doubled back
upon its body. They showed no alarm, but if poked with a stick would
extricate themselves and crawl slowly away.

In the streams they were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy
to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish--a crustacean
of which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very
much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in
contact with the dreaded _toan_.

One afternoon I was plucking a pigeon I had just shot by the margin of a
mountain stream. After removing the viscera, I put the bird in the water
to clean it pro