y
season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermitting and
refreshing. When an islander, bound on some expedition, rises from his
couch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see how the
sky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is always
sure of a "fine day," and the promise of a few genial showers he hails
with pleasure. There is never any of that "remarkable weather" on the
islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, and
still continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamations of
its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentric
meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of Typee
ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by sudden frosts, nor
would picnic parties be deferred on account of inauspicious snowstorms:
for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer and sunshine,
and the whole year is one long tropical month of June just melting into
July.

It is this genial climate which causes the cocoa-nuts to flourish as they
do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of the
Marquesas, and borne aloft on a stately column more than a hundred feet
from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to the simple
natives. Indeed, the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single
limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents an
obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity of
the islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead them
patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly parting from
their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This certainly would be the
case, were it not that the young fruit, encased in a soft green husk, with
the incipient meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and
containing a bumper of the most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly
prize. They have at least twenty different terms to express as many
progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject the fruit
altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which, incredible
as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain within an hour
or two. Others are still more capricious in their tastes; and after
gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, and ingeniously tapping
them, will first sip from one and then from another, as fastid