62 Concerning Sozitk Sea Islands iv 



he had seen the Island of Pines and ' the Island of 

 Beautiful People,' as Don Pedro Fernandez do Quiros 

 called Tahiti. 



From this you will see that it was not that 

 paradise of islands in the Pacific that made him love 

 them ; it was the influence of their own exceeding 

 beauty on an already island-loving soul ; and I give 

 you some notes of his descriptions of the South Sea 

 Islands, which seem to justify his view. 



From Porte de France, New Caledonia. 



' 2ij/ September 1869. 

 ' We sailed away from New Zealand about a 

 month ago, and went northward for a week without 

 seeing anything but one sunfish. At last we saw 

 something that looked like the masts of ships 

 sticking up in the water ; this, we thought, must 

 be the Island of Pines, and so it turned out to be — 

 a wonderful place encircled with coral reefs, through 

 which we threaded our way to a quiet harbour, with 

 the surf foaming and thundering on the reefs outside. 

 This harbour was full of rocks, and creeks, and bays 

 more marvellous than were ever imagined in a 

 dream, and islands innumerable of quaint and 

 fantastic shapes, some of them being so deeply 

 cut round their bases by the action of the water 

 that they presented the appearance of elegantly 

 shaped flower -baskets fifteen or twenty feet high, 

 the flowers being represented by candle-nut palms 

 and Norfolk Island pines. The surface of these 



