18 A NATURALIST'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 Mrs. Boss'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 liousehold 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 tlie grace of 

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

 under the happy circumstances under which 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, she 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 

 sparkling 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 atmosjjheric disturbance, 

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

 it fell to close on 28 inches, a warning which 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 p.m. 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 

 away. Among the palm-trees the wind seems to have played 

 a frantic and capricious devil's dance. Pirouetting wildly 

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

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

 in others, it had swooped down, without making an entrance or 

 exit path, and borne bodily away large circular patches, leaving 

 unharmed the encircling trees ; here and there, sometimes in 



