all that poured into a secluded basin stretching calmly
away below: hand in hand--and very soft, pretty hands they were!--or,
forming a long link, one after another, in a sitting posture, we threw
ourselves upon the mercy of the lively foam above, and like lightning
dashed over the brink of the falls, and were drawn with magical celerity
for a great depth beneath the surface; until our ears tingled and senses
reeled with the rushing noise, when we would again be swept swiftly by a
counter-current up to the air of heaven, and carefully stranded on a
sand bank near by, wondering very much how we got there, and always
greeted by the gay laughter of the water nymphs around us. Nor is it the
safest sport imaginable, for in some of these submarine excursions an
inexperienced person is sometimes given to beat his head or body against
rocks, or be carried to the wrong eddies and floated among dangerous
straits, to the great detriment of his breath and digestion. However, no
one need entertain the slightest fears when attended by the natives.
They may, when saving you in the last gasp of drowning, hold you up in
the combing breakers, and ask, "how much? tree monee?" with a
prospective glance at a reward. But when diverting yourself with these
nut-brown naiads, they guide you in safety through perilous labyrinths,
and shield you from all harm. On one occasion, a laughing, good-humored
damsel, whom we christened the Three-decker, in compliment to a double
row of ports tatooed around her waist, was seated beside me on a flat
ledge, and opened the conversation by asking, "Watee namee you?" "Bill,"
said I. "Liee namee Harree," she archly replied, and shoved me into the
torrent for laughing at her curiosity. But on gaining my lost position,
she broached another theme, which was so appallingly ludicrous, that,
losing all command of soul and body, I rolled off the rocks, and had it
not been for the stout arms of a nimble _wyheenee_, who gallantly came
to the rescue, I should in all probability, as the Three-decker jocosely
remarked, have been _muckee moi_--defunct; for the water had so nearly
filled me up, that there was not the faintest vestige of a laugh left in
my body. I rewarded her with a plug of tobacco, which is occasionally
used as a currency.

We experienced much rain during our sojourn, and when prepared to leave,
were detained some days by the wind. The harbor is protected by a
sweeping sunken reef, that forms a _cul de sac_