pomme de Cythere_, orange
and papaws, banana and alligator-pear, candlenut and chestnut,
mulberry and sandalwood, _tou_, the bastard ebony, and rosewood, the
rose-apple with purple tasseled flowers and delicious fruit, the
pistachio and the _badamier_, scores of shrubs and bushes and
magnificent tree-ferns, all on a tangled sward of white spider-lilies,
great, sweet-smelling plants, an acre of them, and with them other
ferns of many kinds, and mosses, the nodding _taro_ leaves and the
_ti_, the leaves which the Fatu-hivans make into girdles and
wreaths; all grew luxuriantly, friendly neighbors to the Swiss, set
there by him or volunteering for service in the generous way of the
tropics.

The lilies, oranges, and pandanus trees yielded food for the bees,
whose thatched homes stood thick on the hillside above the house.
Grelet was a skilled apiarist, and replenished his melliferous
flocks by wild swarms enticed from the forests. The honey he
strained and bottled, and it was sought of him by messengers from
all the islands.

Orchard and garden beyond the house gave us Valencia and Mandarin
oranges, lemons, _feis_, Guinea cherries, pineapples, Barbadoes
cherries, sugar-cane, sweet-potatoes, watermelons, cantaloups, Chile
peppers, and pumpkins. Watercress came fresh from the river.

Cows and goats browsed about the garden, but Grelet banned pigs to a
secluded valley to run wild. One of the cows was twenty-two years old,
but daily gave brimming buckets of milk for our refreshment. Beef
and fish, breadfruit and _taro_, good bread from American flour, rum,
and wine both red and white, with bowls of milk and green cocoanuts,
were always on the table, a box of cigars, packages of the veritable
Scaferlati Superieur tobacco, and the Job papers, and a dozen pipes.
No king could fare more royally than this Swiss, who during twenty
years had never left the forgotten little island of Fatu-hiva.

His house, set in this bower of greenery, of flowers and perfumes,
was airy and neat, whitewashed both inside and out, with a broad
veranda painted black. Two bedrooms, a storeroom in which he sold
his merchandise, and a workroom, sufficed for all his needs. The
veranda was living-room and dining-room; raised ten feet from the
earth on breadfruit-tree pillars placed on stone, it provided a roof
for his forge, for his saddle-and-bridle room, and for the small
kitchen.

The ceilings in the house were of wood, but on the veranda he had
cle