18 A NATUBALIST'S WANDERINGS 



bounds — to learn to work — and their proficiency astonished me 

 in brass, iron and wood. Every Cocos girl has had her term 

 of apprenticeship to spend in I^Irs. Eoss's house in learning 

 under her direction sewing, cooking, and every house-wifely 

 duty as practised in European homes. I shall not soon 

 forget the deft handmaiden — female servants were employed 

 to do all the household work— who attended to my room ; 

 she was a tall Papuan, who had been rescued from slavery, 

 now one of the true Cocos people, in whom all the grace of 

 body and limb that she inherited from her race had developed, 

 under the happy circumstances under wliich she had come, 

 into the perfection of the human female figure. She could not 

 have performed her work with more neatness and dexterity had 

 she been trained at home. With all the respect of a servant, she 

 mingled a kind solicitude in looking after my comfort and 

 attending to my wants, which as a daughter of the island to its 

 guest, slie might without presumption use. A fresh rose was 

 daily laid on my pillow and on the folded-down counterpane, 

 while, that the water in my basin might seem fresher than its 

 sparklmg self, she sprinkled it with fragrant rose leaves. 



No more flourishing or contented community could have 

 been found at the opening of 1876, than its 500 island-born 

 inhabitants. On the 25th of January, however, the mercurial 

 barometer indicated some unusual atmospheric disturbance, 

 and the air felt extremely heavy and oppressive. On the 28th 

 It tell to close on 28 inches, a warning whicli gave time for 

 all boats to be hauled to a place of safety, and other prepara- 

 tions for a storm to be made. On the afternoon of the same 

 day there appeared in the western sky an ominously dark 

 bank of clouds, and at 4 v.u. a cyclone of unwonted fury burst 

 over this part of the Indian Ocean. The storehouses and 

 mills, but recently renewed, were completely gutted and de- 

 molished ; every house in both villages was carried completely 

 a^^.^y. Among the palm-trees the wind seems"to have plaved 

 a frantic and capricious devil's dance. Pirouetting wildly 

 round the atoll, m some places it had cleared lanes hundreds 

 of yards m length, snapping off the trees close to the ground ; 



t 



un ™n;w, ™ bod,lyaway large circular patches, leavin 



imhatmed tlio encircling trees ; here auJ there, soir,. ime., \ 



rr 



