and children, all
holding in their hands bits of bamboo, and each clamouring to be served
first.

For three or four hours I was engaged in manufacturing pop-guns, but at
last made over my good-will and interests in the concern to a lad of
remarkably quick parts, whom I soon initiated into the art and mystery.

Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, now resounded all over the valley. Duels, skirmishes,
pitched battles, and general engagements were to be seen on every side.
Here, as you walked along a path which led through a thicket, you fell
into a cunningly-laid ambush, and became a target for a body of
musketeers, whose tattooed limbs you could just see peeping into view
through the foliage. There, you were assailed by the intrepid garrison of
a house, who levelled their bamboo rifles at you from between the upright
canes which composed its sides. Farther on, you were fired upon by a
detachment of sharpshooters, mounted upon the top of a pi-pi.

Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop! green guavas, seeds, and berries were flying about in
every direction, and during this dangerous state of affairs, I was half
afraid that, like the man and his brazen bull, I should fall a victim to
my own ingenuity. Like everything else, however, the excitement gradually
wore away, though ever after occasionally pop-guns might be heard at all
hours of the day.

It was towards the close of the pop-gun war, that I was infinitely
diverted with a strange freak of Marheyo's.

I had worn, when I quitted the ship, a pair of thick pumps, which, from
the rough usage they had received in scaling precipices and sliding down
gorges, were so dilapidated as to be altogether unfit for use--so, at
least, would have thought the generality of people, and so they most
certainly were, when considered in the light of shoes. But things
unserviceable in one way, may with advantage be applied in another--that
is, if one has genius enough for the purpose. This genius Marheyo
possessed in a superlative degree, as he abundantly evinced by the use to
which he put these sorely bruised and battered old shoes.

Every article, however trivial, which belonged to me, the natives appeared
to regard as sacred; and I observed that for several days after becoming
an inmate of the house, my pumps were suffered to remain, untouched, where
I had first happened to throw them. I remembered, however, that after
awhile I had missed them from their accustomed place; but the matter gave
me no concern, supposing tha