IV 



Tahiti 7 1 



From Papieti, Tahiti. 



' 27 tk August 1870. 



' Here we are at Tahiti seeing the strangest, most 

 beautiful sights. On the 1 2th we ran past the 

 rocky peaks of Tubuai in the Austral group (the 

 island on which old Fletcher Christian of the 

 Bounty wanted to settle after he left Tahiti), in 

 glorious weather, and on the Sunday, about 9 A.M., 

 sighted the great mountains, rising seven thousand 

 feet high, glorious purple, blue, and gray peaks 

 away up in the clouds, dark shadowy gorges and 

 bright velvety green sea ridges, and below, a mass 

 of tropical vegetation, the white surf, and the sea. 

 Though our first view was spoilt by rain, it was 

 marvellously lovely, reminding me somewhat of 

 the east coast of Spain between Malaga and Gib., 

 but infinitely finer. Lord ! how well I remember 

 seeing it all, long years ago, when I was a-sailing 

 round the world with Byron — not the poet, the 

 navigator (1764-66). We had to lay off and on 

 Point Venus, — the sunrise on the great peaks 



but still trees. The rabliits were of fancy colours, principally white 

 and yellow, and very strange they looked seated amongst the foliage. 

 I rather wondered at the time why they had not reverted to the natural 

 colour of the wild animal. As food they were wonderfully nasty, even 

 to tastes longing for fresh meat of any sort, so that one need not regret 

 their extinction from starvation and interbreeding, which probably 

 enough has happened by this time. We may not live to see it, but I 

 fully expect that the rabbits of Australia will work out their own 

 destruction in time, as did those of the Balearic Islands in the early 

 Christian centuries.' 



