Their mothers place them on the river bank at a day old, and
in a few months they are swimming in shallow water. At two and three
years they play in the surf, swimming with the easy motion of a frog.
They have no fear of the water to overcome, for they are accustomed
to the element from birth, and it is to them as natural as land.

It should be so with all, for human locomotion in water is no more
tiresome or difficult than on the earth. One element is as suitable
to man as the other for transportation of himself, when habitude
give natural movement, strength, and fearlessness. A Marquesan who
cannot swim is unknown, and they carry objects through the water as
easily as through a grove. I have seen a woman with an infant at her
breast leap from a canoe and swim through a quarter of a mile of
breakers to the shore, merely to save a somewhat longer walk.

One's hours at the beach were not all spent in the water. Many were
the curious and delicious morsels we found on the rocks that were
uncovered at low tide, stranded fish, crabs, and small crawling
shell-fish. One of our favorites was the sea-urchin, called _hatuke_,
_fetuke_, or _matuke_. Round, as big as a Bartlett pear, with greenish
spines five or six inches long, they were as hideous to see as they
were pleasant to eat. In the last quarter of the moon they were
specially good, though what the moon has to do with their flavor
neither the Marquesans nor I know. It is so; the Marquesans have
always known it, and I have proved it.

The spines of these sea-urchins make slate-pencils in some of the
islands, and are excellent for hastily writing on a nearby cliff a
message to a friend who is following tardily. The creatures are
poisonous when alive, however, and revenge a blow of careless hand
or foot by wounds that are long in healing.

We found lobsters among the rocks, too, and on some beaches a
strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti _varo_, a kind
of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede.
They grow from six to twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide,
with legs or feelers all along their sides, like the teeth of a
pocket-comb. Their shells are translucent yellow with black markings;
the female wears a red stripe down her back and carries red eggs
beneath her. Both she and her mate, with their thousand crawling legs,
their hideous heads and tails, have a most repulsive appearance. If
one did not know they are excellen