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circular beach sweeping round the bottom of thebay with its richly topped groves and overhangingmountains. Many hundreds of the islanders coveredthe shore, some entirely naked, many nearly so,while others appeared in war-caps of feathers playinggaily in the breeze, and in tufted turbans and otherfanciful head-dresses, below which their mantles ofvarious hues floated gracefully about their limbs; allmingled in one living mass, from children still intheir mothers’ arms to withered dames of threescoreyears and ten, and veteran warriors with snowy locksand fleecy beard, seeming to need the spears theyheld for staves to support the decrepitude of theirtottering frames, rather than as weapons of defenceagainst an enemy. Among them might here andthere be discerned the glittering buttons, epaulettes,and laced hat of an officer thickly thronged, or theless expensive but gayer uniform of a marine, af-fording a strong contrast to the wild islander withhis tattooed skin, savage ornaments, unlanced spear,and war-club tufted with the hair of enemies slain byhim in battle.
It was one of the most characteristic and novelscenes we had witnessed at the island, and fixed ourgaze till we had nearly reached the ship.
In the afternoon I went on shore again, intendingto spend an hour in sketching, but a friendly native*whom I had seen in the train of a chief in the morn-ing, urged me to go with him up the valley, to see,as he expressed it, “ the country of the young kingMoana and notwithstanding the terrific charactergiven us of the Taipiis, I committed myself to his
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