aven skull of one of the savages.
Presently it betrayed a pair of eyes, and soon I became aware that what
I had supposed to have been one of the fruit was nothing else than the
head of an islander, who had adopted this singular method of bringing
his produce to market. The cocoanuts were all attached to one another
by strips of the husk, partly torn from the shell and rudely fastened
together. Their proprietor inserting his head into the midst of them,
impelled his necklace of cocoanuts through the water by striking out
beneath the surface with his feet.

I was somewhat astonished to perceive that among the number of natives
that surrounded us, not a single female was to be seen. At that time I
was ignorant of the fact that by the operation of the 'taboo' the use of
canoes in all parts of the island is rigorously prohibited to the entire
sex, for whom it is death even to be seen entering one when hauled on
shore; consequently, whenever a Marquesan lady voyages by water, she
puts in requisition the paddles of her own fair body.

We had approached within a mile and a half perhaps of this foot of
the bay, when some of the islanders, who by this time had managed to
scramble aboard of us at the risk of swamping their canoes, directed our
attention to a singular commotion in the water ahead of the vessel. At
first I imagined it to be produced by a shoal of fish sporting on the
surface, but our savage friends assured us that it was caused by a shoal
of 'whinhenies' (young girls), who in this manner were coming off from
the shore to welcome is. As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising
and sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing
above the water the girdle of tappa, and their long dark hair trailing
beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be nothing else
than so many mermaids--and very like mermaids they behaved too.

We were still some distance from the beach, and under slow headway,
when we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and they
boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chain-plates and
springing into the chains; others, at the peril of being run over by
the vessel in her course, catching at the bob-stays, and wreathing their
slender forms about the ropes, hung suspended in the air. All of them
at length succeeded in getting up the ship's side, where they clung
dripping with the brine and glowing from the bath, their jet-black
tresses streaming o