orbs, like one
of those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers' saints! I am one
of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at
any time an insufferable annoyance.

Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I had
a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up; the
cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in pursuit;
but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in the
valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible that
it might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vain
to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of them
had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me to
this day.

Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none
which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued
species of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail,
and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures were
to be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, and
multitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as they
ran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and
down the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beauty
of these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims
upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear.
Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady place
during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them.
If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when I
tried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn for
protection to the very hand that attacked it.

The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see one perched
upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it did
not fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until you
could almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at your
presence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from your
path. Had salt been less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the
very place to have gone birding with it. I remember that once, on an
uninhabited island of the Gallipagos, a bird alighted on my outstretched
arm, while its