fringing the steep sides of mountains. Rude and bare hills

embraced the inlet upon either hand; it was enclosed to the

landward by a bulk of shattered mountains. In every crevice of

that barrier the forest harboured, roosting and nestling there like

birds about a ruin; and far above, it greened and roughened the

razor edges of the summit.

Under the eastern shore, our schooner, now bereft of any breeze,

continued to creep in: the smart creature, when once under way,

appearing motive in herself. From close aboard arose the bleating

of young lambs; a bird sang in the hillside; the scent of the land

and of a hundred fruits or flowers flowed forth to meet us; and,

presently, a house or two appeared, standing high upon the ankles

of the hills, and one of these surrounded with what seemed a

garden. These conspicuous habitations, that patch of culture, had

we but known it, were a mark of the passage of whites; and we might

have approached a hundred islands and not found their parallel. It

was longer ere we spied the native village, standing (in the

universal fashion) close upon a curve of beach, close under a grove

of palms; the sea in front growling and whitening on a concave arc

of reef. For the cocoa-tree and the island man are both lovers and

neighbours of the surf. 'The coral waxes, the palm grows, but man

departs,' says the sad Tahitian proverb; but they are all three, so

long as they endure, co-haunters of the beach. The mark of

anchorage was a blow-hole in the rocks, near the south-easterly

corner of the bay. Punctually to our use, the blow-hole spouted;

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