IV 



Eimeo 7 7 



no idea that they were still in such a perfectly 

 natural state — still with the old head-dresses, the kilts 

 of yellow leaves, and the extreme absence of clothing 

 that one sees pictured in Captain Cook's voyages : 

 most of the islands were quite unspoilt by 

 Europeans. 



* First of all, we ran over to Eimeo, where we 

 anchored in the western harbour, inside the reef, in 

 one of the most glorious gorges that I ever saw : 

 sheer precipices of green rising upwards of two 

 thousand feet nearly from the water's edge, fringed 

 around their feet with coco and orange trees and 

 luxuriant vegetation of all kinds. The peaks and 

 walls of rock were indeed magnificent beyond com- 

 parison, and the red roof of the ex-manager's house 

 set off the foreground exquisitely. Here we saw the 

 natives catching small fish — something between a 

 dace and a charr to look at, silvery green above and 

 crimson beneath — by means of a kind of seine made 

 out of pandanus leaves ; when near shore they 

 inserted an immense basket, and scooped up the 

 beauties by hundreds. The eastern harbour, which 

 we went to afterwards, was not nearly so fine, but 

 there I saw tropic-birds with white tails at least a 

 yard long, soaring about the black cliffs — a most 

 beautiful sight. Then we sailed to Huahine — a 

 sweet, pretty island with a missionary, small but 

 kind, Saville by name. 



' We had a walk with him to a lagoon separated 

 from the sea by a raised coral beach a couple of 



