but for the greater portion of
the time were skipping from house to house, gadding and gossiping with
their acquaintances.

From the rest of these, however, I must except the beauteous nymph
Fayaway, who was my peculiar favourite. Her free pliant figure was the
very perfection of female grace and beauty. Her complexion was a rich
and mantling olive, and when watching the glow upon her cheeks I could
almost swear that beneath the transparent medium there lurked the
blushes of a faint vermilion.

The face of this girl was a rounded oval, and each feature as perfectly
formed as the heart or imagination of man could desire.

Her full lips, when parted with a smile, disclosed teeth of dazzling
whiteness and when her rosy mouth opened with a burst of merriment, they
looked like the milk-white seeds of the 'arta,' a fruit of the valley,
which, when cleft in twain, shows them reposing in rows on each side,
imbedded in the red and juicy pulp. Her hair of the deepest brown,
parted irregularly in the middle, flowed in natural ringlets over her
shoulders, and whenever she chanced to stoop, fell over and hid from
view her lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue
eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid yet
unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed
upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Fayaway were as soft and
delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude
labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her
feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as
those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The
skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of
mollifying ointments, was inconceivably smooth and soft.

I may succeed, perhaps, in particularizing some of the individual
features of Fayaway's beauty, but that general loveliness of appearance
which they all contributed to produce I will not attempt to describe.
The easy unstudied graces of a child of nature like this, breathing from
infancy an atmosphere of perpetual summer, and nurtured by the simple
fruits of the earth; enjoying a perfect freedom from care and anxiety,
and removed effectually from all injurious tendencies, strike the eye in
a manner which cannot be pourtrayed. This picture is no fancy sketch; it
is drawn from the most vivid recollections of the person delineated.

Were I asked if the b