ive participation in the affairs
of the valley, seldom or never accompanying the natives in their various
expeditions; and employing the greater part of his time in throwing up a
little shed just outside the house, upon which he was engaged to my
certain knowledge for four months, without appearing to make any sensible
advance. I suppose the old gentleman was in his dotage, for he manifested
in various ways the characteristics which mark this particular stage of
life.

I remember in particular his having a choice pair of ear-ornaments,
fabricated from the teeth of some sea-monster. These he would alternately
wear and take off at least fifty times in the course of the day, going and
coming from his little hut on each occasion with all the tranquillity
imaginable. Sometimes slipping them through the slits in his ears, he
would seize his spear--which in length and slightness resembled a
fishing-pole--and go stalking beneath the shadows of the neighbouring
groves, as if about to give a hostile meeting to some cannibal knight. But
he would soon return again, and hiding his weapon under the protecting
eaves of the house, and rolling his clumsy trinkets carefully in a piece
of tappa, would resume his more pacific operations as quietly as if he had
never interrupted them.

But despite his eccentricities, Marheyo was a most paternal and
warm-hearted old fellow, and in this particular not a little resembled his
son Kory-Kory. The mother of the latter was the mistress of the family,
and a notable housewife, and a most industrious old lady she was. If she
did not understand the art of making jellies, jams, custards, tea-cakes,
and such like trashy affairs, she was profoundly skilled in the mysteries
of preparing "amar," "poee-poee," and "kokoo," with other substantial
matters. She was a genuine busy-body; bustling about the house like a
country landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls
tasks to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into
every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a
prodigious clatter among the calabashes. Sometimes she might have been
seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and
kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle about
as if she would shiver the vessel into fragments: on other occasions,
galloping about the valley in search of a particular kind of leaf, used in
some of her recondite opera