ale, and consequently I was enabled to make some estimate with regard
to its numbers. I should imagine that there were about two thousand
inhabitants in Typee; and no number could have been better adapted to
the extent of the valley. The valley is some nine miles in length,
and may average one in breadth; the houses being distributed at wide
intervals throughout its whole extent, principally, however, towards the
head of the vale. There are no villages; the houses stand here and there
in the shadow of the groves, or are scattered along the banks of the
winding stream; their golden-hued bamboo sides and gleaming white thatch
forming a beautiful contrast to the perpetual verdure in which they are
embowered. There are no roads of any kind in the valley. Nothing but a
labyrinth of footpaths twisting and turning among the thickets without
end.

The penalty of the Fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee;
for, with the one solitary exception of striking a light, I scarcely saw
any piece of work performed there which caused the sweat to stand upon
a single brow. As for digging and delving for a livelihood, the thing is
altogether unknown. Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana,
and in her own good time she brings them to maturity, when the idle
savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite.

Ill-fated people! I shudder when I think of the change a few years
will produce in their paradisaical abode; and probably when the most
destructive vices, and the worst attendances on civilization, shall have
driven all peace and happiness from the valley, the magnanimous
French will proclaim to the world that the Marquesas Islands have been
converted to Christianity! and this the Catholic world will doubtless
consider as a glorious event. Heaven help the 'Isles of the Sea'!--The
sympathy which Christendom feels for them, has, alas! in too many
instances proved their bane.

How little do some of these poor islanders comprehend when they look
around them, that no inconsiderable part of their disasters originate
in certain tea-party excitements, under the influence of which
benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old
ladies in spectacles, and young ladies in sober russet gowns, contribute
sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which is to
ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose end has
almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal des