iety Islands, and takes a circuit round the
largest of them, Tahiti, the finest and best known of all the islands in
the southern sea. There again he sees volcanoes long since extinct,
grand wild cliffs thickly covered with wood, impenetrable clumps of
ferns, and luxuriant grass, while down the slopes dance lively brooks to
the lagoon separated from the sea by the breakwaters of the coral
master-builders. On the strand grow the ever-present cocoa palms, as
distinctive of the islands of the southern sea as the date palms are of
the desert regions of the Old World. Here the weather is beautiful, a
warm, equable, tropical sea climate with only three or four degrees
difference between winter and summer. The south-east trade-wind blows
all the year round, and storms are rare visitors. The rain is moderate,
and fever is unknown.

The natives take a bright and happy view of life. They deck their hair
with wreaths of flowers, their gait is light and easy, and they knew no
sorrow until the white man came and spoiled their life and liberty.

Now the original inhabitants of Tahiti are dying out, and are being
replaced by Chinamen, Europeans, and natives from other islands to the
north-west. They still, however, till their fields, put out their
fishing-canoes in the lagoon, and pull down cocoa-nuts in their season.
They still wear wreaths of flowers in their hair, a last relic of a
happier existence. Pigeons coo in the trees, and green and blue and
white parrots utter their ear-piercing screams. Horses, cattle, sheep,
goats, and swine are newcomers; lizards, scorpions, flies, and
mosquitoes are indigenous. The luxuriant gardens with their natural
charms Europeans have not been able to destroy, and the frigate bird,
the eagle of the sea, with the tail feathers of which the chiefs of
Tahiti used to decorate their heads, still roosts in the trees on the
strand, and seeks its food far out in the sea. The albatross cannot but
notice the frigate bird. He sees in him a rival. The latter does not
make such long journeys, and does not venture so far out to sea; but he
is a master in the art of flying, and he is an unconscionable thief. He
follows dolphins and other fishes of prey to appropriate their catch,
and forces other birds to relinquish their food when they are in the act
of swallowing it. When fishermen are out drawing up their nets, he skims
so low over the boat that he may be stunned with an oar, and he is so
attracted by bright