se was rather _mechant_ sometimes. He behaved well
on the present occasion, however, and we had a pleasant drive in the
outskirts of the town for a couple of hours.

Just as we returned, a gentleman came and asked me if I should like to
see some remarkably fine pearls, and on my gladly consenting, he took
me to his house, where I saw some pearls certainly worth going to look
at, but too expensive for me, one pear-shaped gem alone having been
valued at 1,000_l_. I was told they came from a neighbouring island,
and I was given two shells containing pearls in various stages of
formation.

It was now time to go on board to receive some friends whom we had
invited to breakfast, and who arrived at about half-past eleven.

[Illustration: A Tahitian Lady.]

After breakfast, and a chat, and an examination of the photograph
books, &c., we all landed, and went to see Messrs. Brander's stores,
where all sorts of requisites for fitting out ships and their crews
can be procured. It is surprising to find how plentiful are the
supplies of the necessaries and even the luxuries of civilised life in
this far-away corner of the globe. You can even get _ice_ here, for
the manufacture of which a retired English infantry officer has set up
an establishment with great success. But what interested me most were
the products of this and the neighbouring islands. There were tons of
exquisitely tinted pearl shells, six or eight inches in diameter,
formerly a valuable article of commerce, but now worth comparatively
little. The pearls that came out of them had unfortunately been sent
away to Liverpool--1,000_l_. worth by this morning's, and 5,000_l_ by
the last mail-ship. Then there was vanilla, a most precarious crop,
which needs to be carefully watered and shaded from the first moment
it is planted, and which must be gathered before it is ripe, and dried
and matured in a moist heat, between blankets and feather-beds, in
order that the pods may not crack and allow the essence to escape. We
saw also edible fungus, exported to San Francisco, and thence to Hong
Kong, solely for the use of the Chinese; tripang, or _beche-de-mer_, a
sort of sea-slug or holothuria, which, either living or dead, fresh or
dried, looks equally untempting, but is highly esteemed by the
Celestials; coprah, or dried cocoa-nut kernels, broken into small
pieces in order that they may stow better, and exported to England and
other parts, where the oil is expressed and oil-cak