venomous reptiles, and no snakes of any
description to be found in any of the valleys.

In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no topic of
conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes. The rainy
season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermitting
and refreshing. When an islander bound on some expedition rises from his
couch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see how the
sky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is always
sure of a 'fine day', and the promise of a few genial showers he hails
with pleasure. There is never any of that 'remarkable weather' on the
islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, and
still continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamations
of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentric
meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of
Typee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by sudden
frosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on account of inauspicious
snowstorms: for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer
and sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month of June just
melting into July.

It is this genial climate which causes the cocoanuts to flourish as they
do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of the
Marquesas, and home aloft on a stately column more than a hundred feet
from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to the simple
natives. Indeed the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single
limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents
an obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity
of the islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead
them patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly parting
from their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This certainly would
be the case, were it not that the young fruit, encased in a soft green
husk, with the incipient meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to its
sides, and containing a bumper of the most delicious nectar, is what
they chiefly prize. They have at least twenty different terms to express
as many progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject
the fruit altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which,
incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain