s made a primary covering; above that, from
one wall of the mountain to another, the ravine was roofed with cloud;
so that we moved below, amid teeming vegetation, in a covered house of
heat. On either hand, at every hundred yards, instead of the houseless,
disembowelling paepaes of Nuka-hiva, populous houses turned out their
inhabitants to cry "Kaoha!" to the passers-by. The road, too, was busy:
strings of girls, fair and foul, as in less favoured countries; men
bearing breadfruit; the sisters, with a little guard of pupils; a fellow
bestriding a horse--passed and greeted us continually; and now it was a
Chinaman who came to the gate of his flower-yard, and gave us "Good-day"
in excellent English; and a little farther on it would be some natives
who set us down by the wayside, made us a feast of mummy-apple, and
entertained us as we ate with drumming on a tin case. With all this fine
plenty of men and fruit, death is at work here also. The population,
according to the highest estimate, does not exceed six hundred in the
whole vale of Atuona; and yet, when I once chanced to put the question,
Brother Michel counted up ten whom he knew to be sick beyond recovery.
It was here, too, that I could at last gratify my curiosity with the
sight of a native house in the very article of dissolution. It had
fallen flat along the paepae, its poles sprawling ungainly; the rains
and the mites contended against it; what remained seemed sound enough,
but much was gone already; and it was easy to see how the insects
consumed the walls as if they had been bread, and the air and the rain
ate into them like vitriol.

A little ahead of us, a young gentleman, very well tattooed, and dressed
in a pair of white trousers and a flannel shirt, had been marching
unconcernedly. Of a sudden, without apparent cause, he turned back, took
us in possession and led us undissuadably along a by-path to the river's
edge. There, in a nook of the most attractive amenity, he bade us to sit
down: the stream splashing at our elbow, a shock of nondescript greenery
enshrining us from above; and thither, after a brief absence, he brought
us a cocoa-nut, a lump of sandal-wood, and a stick he had begun to
carve: the nut for present refreshment, the sandal-wood for a precious
gift, and the stick--in the simplicity of his vanity--to harvest
premature praise. Only one section was yet carved, although the whole
was pencil-marked in lengths; and when I proposed to buy it, Po