ank
the sparkling diamond-drops of dew trembling upon the guava thickets,
nor had the breeze shaken a leaf of the towering cocoanuts, nor vibrated
a single sphere of bread-fruit that hung like pendulums from amid the
glossy leaves. The air, too, was heavy with perfume of orange and
jessamine--and we went larking along the quiet road--kicking up our
heels and whooping joyously--pausing a moment to catch a gleaming view
of the slender peaks above us--the conspicuous Diadem of Faatoar--the
green savannahs sloping up the valleys, or the blue sea and reef as yet
undazzled by the rising sun.

We dallied frequently with young cocoanuts, and said _aroha_--love to
you--to any lithe _vahinees_ we encountered in our path. Once we tarried
for repose and beer at a French auberge, and then, without further
break to our voyage, we continued on along the curves of the reef-locked
shores for some miles, when a lane branched away to the left, and we
came to the new country house of Pomarce at Papoa.

It stands on a narrow coralline embankment, within a bound of the
smooth, pebbly beach--surrounded by noble trees, and overhanging
clusters of the richest tropical foliage. The building is an oblong
oval, one hundred feet by thirty. Through the centre runs a range of
square, polished columns of light koa wood, eighteen feet high,
supporting a cross-sleeper the whole length of the roof: from this beam,
drooping down at an angle of about fifty degrees, were a great number of
white, glistening poles, radiating with perfect evenness and regularity
to within six feet of the ground, where they were notched and tied
securely with braids of variegated sennit to ridge-pieces fitted in
posts around the circuit of the building. The roof was thatched with the
long, dried, tapering leaves of pandannus, folded on slim wands, and
plaited in regular lines, down to the eaves, where, just within, fell a
few inches of plain fringed matting nicely stitched to the roof. Inside
this curtain, again, were the perpendicular sides of the dwelling,
constructed of the same white poles of hibiscus as those upholding the
roof, and all lashed by braid to cross sections between the
posts--leaving narrow spaces between each pole, and but two arches for
doorways on the side opposite the sea.

The house was quite new, and indeed hardly completed, but with the
breeze blowing through the open trellis-worked walls, and the great
lofty roof hanging lightly above, it presented