214 MBUA BAY AND MUTHUATA. 
by thick mangrove-bushes, among which many women and children 
were seen catching a large kind of crab, whilst flocks of paroquets 
were flying around them. This river is about two hundred feet wide, 
and very tortuous. 
The town, named Vaturua, is situated about a mile up the river. 
The. entrance to it is through a hollow way, to pass through which it 
was almost necessary to creep. 
They were warned of their approach to it by the chattering of the 
women and children, who were assembled in numbers to greet their — 
arrival. The village is about two hundred yards from the bank of 
the river; it is surrounded with palisades of cocoa-nut trees and other 
timber, and a ditch, with gates, &c., very much on the same plan 
as that observed by us at Moa on the island of Tongataboo. It con- 
tains fifty or sixty houses, among which are several mbures. In some 
of their houses graves were observed, which the natives said were 
placed there to protect them from their neighbours. They seemed 
the most good-natured set we had yet met with, and appeared quite 
familiar with the whites. This was, however, to have been expected ; 
for their intercourse with foreigners has been, until recently, more 
frequent than that of any other part of the group. It is here that so 
large a quantity of sandalwood has been shipped. 
It was said that the chief, Tui Mora, had even made the people 
break up their canoes for the purpose of constructing the palisades to 
fortify the village, and thus at the same time to prevent his people from 
deserting to his enemy. 
On their landing they saw an albino, who had the features of his 
countrymen, although he resembled the lower class of Irish, so much 
so that the sailors jocosely remarked that a blunder had been com- 
mitted by his having been born in a wrong country. His skin was a 
dirty white, and fairer than that of an European would be if exposed to 
the sun; he was marked with many brown spots, about the size of a 
sixpence or less; his hair was of the same colour as that of the natives 
who use lime-water for cleaning it; his eyebrows and eyelashes were 
of a flaxen colour; his eyes were almost constantly closed, as if the 
light affected them; the iris was blue, with no tinge of red. On a 
subsequent visit he had dyed his hair a coal-black, which gave him an 
odd and ludicrous appearance. The natives called him Areea. He 
was about thirty years of age. 
‘The white men say that albinos are not unfrequently seen. I saw a 
man who was partially so, having an appearance as if he had been 
scalded about the face and upper part of his body. Dr. Pickering sug- 
gests that it is not improbable that the white individuals reported to 
