ed to do what they please, running about the aisles, rolling balls,
stealing mamma's bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last going to
sleep in the middle of the floor. I forgot to say that the whips to play
horses, and the balls to roll about the church--at least I never saw
them used elsewhere--grow ready made on trees; which is rough on
toy-shops. The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses myself;
but no such luck! my hair is grey, and I am a great, big, ugly man. The
balls are rather hard, but very light and quite round. When you grow up
and become offensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of
London, and have it come back to you entirely loaded with these balls;
when you could satisfy your mind as to their character, and give them
away when done with to your uncles and aunts. But what I really wanted
to tell you was this: besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, on
the tree-top!), I have seen some real _made_ toys, the first hitherto
observed in the South Seas.

This was how. You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; one horse; in the
front seat two Tahiti natives, in their Sunday clothes, blue coat, white
shirt, kilt (a little longer than the Scotch) of a blue stuff with big
white or yellow flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my
wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of lunch and
things: among us a great deal of fun in broken Tahitian, one of the
natives, the sub-chief of the village, being a great ally of mine.
Indeed we have exchanged names; so that he is now called Rui, the
nearest they can come to Louis, for they have no _l_ and no _s_ in their
language. Rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a magnificent man.
We all have straw hats, for the sun is strong. We drive between the sea,
which makes a great noise, and the mountains; the road is cut through a
forest mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the place of
our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, bigger than your head
and far nicer, called Barbedine. Presently we came to a house in a
pretty garden, quite by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows
open, no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. It looked like a
house in a fairy-tale, and just beyond we must ford a river, and there
we saw the inhabitants. Just in the mouth of the river, where it met the
sea waves, they were ducking and bathing and screaming together like a
covey of birds: seven or eight litt