198 Voyage of the Novara. 



antipodes were forming the prologue as it were of tlie war 

 that broke out somewhat later), we were permitted to use the 

 islet of Motu Uta, lying in the harbour, for the purpose of 

 carrying on, free from interruption, our astronomical, meteor- 

 ological, and magnetic observations. A simple wooden hut 

 which we found upon the island served for an observatory, 

 while quantities of slender-stemmed cocoa-palms, waving 

 their rustling green canopies overhead, invited us to welcome 

 rei^ose after the exhaustion of the day's labour. To this 

 smiling islet, which rose in the midst of the bay like a basket 

 of flowers, King Pomdre II. once retired, there to translate 

 the Holy Scriptures into Tahitian. Here, too — probably in 

 the very hut which now served us as an observatory — it "was 

 that the same sovereign, when old, spent whole days, and 

 occasionally, according to tradition, indulged so freely in 

 cognac that he was frequently heard, when in that state, to 

 say to himself, '' Pomare, Pomare ! thy 2^uan (pig) were 

 now better fitted to reign than thou ! " 



