no doubt that the greater part of the inhabitants of the valley had bathed
themselves in the light of our benignant countenances.

As last, when their numbers began to diminish, a superb-looking warrior
stooped the towering plumes of his head-dress beneath the low portal, and
entered the house. I saw at once that he was some distinguished personage,
the natives regarding him with the utmost deference, and making room for
him as he approached. His aspect was imposing. The splendid long drooping
tail-feathers of the tropical bird, thickly interspersed with the gaudy
plumage of the cock, were disposed in an immense upright semicircle upon
his head, their lower extremities being fixed in a crescent of
guinea-beads which spanned the forehead. Around his neck were several
enormous necklaces of boar's tusks, polished like ivory, and disposed in
such a manner as that the longest and largest were upon his capacious
chest. Thrust forward through the large apertures in his ears were two
small and finely shaped sperm-whale teeth, presenting their cavities in
front, stuffed with freshly-plucked leaves, and curiously wrought at the
other end into strange little images and devices. These barbaric trinkets,
garnished in this manner at their open extremities, and tapering and
curving round to a point behind the ear, resembled not a little a pair of
cornucopias.

The loins of the warrior were girt about with heavy folds of a
dark-coloured tappa, hanging before and behind in clusters of braided
tassels, while anklets and bracelets of curling human hair completed his
unique costume. In his right hand he grasped a beautifully-carved
paddle-spear, nearly fifteen feet in length, made of the bright koar-wood,
one end sharply pointed, and the other flattened like an oar-blade.
Hanging obliquely from his girdle by a loop of sinnate, was a
richly-decorated pipe; the slender reed forming its stem was coloured with
a red pigment, and round it, as well as the idol-bowl, fluttered little
streamers of the thinnest tappa.

But that which was most remarkable in the appearance of this splendid
islander, was the elaborate tattooing displayed on every noble limb. All
imaginable lines and curves and figures were delineated over his whole
body, and in their grotesque variety and infinite profusion, I could only
compare them to the crowded groupings of quaint patterns we sometimes see
in costly pieces of lacework. The most simple and remarkable of all these