520 A NATURALIST ON THE " CHALLENGER." 



scarcely any more fern leaves in the dark, and they squatted 

 out the night together, sheltered from the rain by a small extin- 

 guisher-shaped erection, which looked as if one human body 

 could not be forced into it, much less two. The temperature 

 here at daybreak was 60° F., and the morning being cloudy, and 

 the camp lying in a narrow gorge, it remained the same for an 

 hour and a half after daybreak. 



In the morning we descended again several hundred feet, 

 and sent back to the hut and procured two young men, supposed 

 to be practised mountaineers, and, as we thought, certain to know 

 the way about every pass within four or five miles of their 

 dwelling. One of them, as a proof of his knowledge, brought with 

 him what I suppose is the most primitive form of a map. It was 

 a thick stick of wood about a foot and a half long, with two short 

 cross pieces on it at some distance from the ends, and on each 

 of these cross pieces were set up three short uprights of wood. 



I give a figure of it from memory. 

 The uprights represented moun- 

 tain peaks, and the spaces between, 

 the valleys. 



The new guide held his map 

 tahitian mountain map. in his hand and took long con- 



sultation with his brother, and then explained matters thoroughly 

 to our former guides. He clutched the uprights one after another 

 and dilated upon them, pointing out the peaks to which they 

 corresponded. There seemed no doubt we had got hold of the 

 right man at last. 



The guides now lashed our small baggage on their backs, 

 instead of on poles as before, since this mode of carriage was no 

 longer practicable, owing to the steepness of the ascent, and we 

 started up the face of an extremely steep-sided ridge, a spur of 

 Orofena, the highest mountain of Tahiti. At the lower part, we 

 pulled ourselves up by means of the trailing Screw-pine, which 

 covered the ground with a tangled mass of its long serpentine 

 stems so thickly, that as we climbed over it, we did not reach the 

 ground beneath by a yard or more. 



Near the summit of the spur, the face of the ridge was 

 almost perpendicular, and one of the men got up by the help of 



