heir courage and their justice.

How often is the term 'savages' incorrectly applied! None really
deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travellers.
They have discovered heathens and barbarians whom by horrible cruelties
they have exasperated into savages. It may be asserted without fear
of contradictions that in all the cases of outrages committed by
Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors,
and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders
is mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples.

But to return. Owing to the mutual hostilities of the different tribes
I have mentioned, the mountainous tracts which separate their respective
territories remain altogether uninhabited; the natives invariably
dwelling in the depths of the valleys, with a view of securing
themselves from the predatory incursions of their enemies, who often
lurk along their borders, ready to cut off any imprudent straggler,
or make a descent upon the inmates of some sequestered habitation. I
several times met with very aged men, who from this cause had never
passed the confines of their native vale, some of them having never even
ascended midway up the mountains in the whole course of their lives, and
who, accordingly had little idea of the appearance of any other part of
the island, the whole of which is not perhaps more than sixty miles in
circuit. The little space in which some of these clans pass away their
days would seem almost incredible.

The glen of the Tior will furnish a curious illustration of this.

The inhabited part is not more than four miles in length, and varies
in breadth from half a mile to less than a quarter. The rocky vine-clad
cliffs on one side tower almost perpendicularly from their base to
the height of at least fifteen hundred feet; while across the vale--in
striking contrast to the scenery opposite--grass-grown elevations rise
one above another in blooming terraces. Hemmed in by these stupendous
barriers, the valley would be altogether shut out from the rest of the
world, were it not that it is accessible from the sea at one end, and by
a narrow defile at the other.

The impression produced upon the mind, when I first visited this
beautiful glen, will never be obliterated.

I had come from Nukuheva by water in the ship's boat, and when we
entered the bay of Tior it was high noon. The heat had been intense, as
we had been floating upon