letter x.] A YOUNG "SAVAGE." 87 



conceal the mantling of the bright southern blood in his cheeks. 

 His figure is lithe, athletic, and as pliable as if he were an in- 

 vertebrate animal, capable of unlimited doublings up and con- 

 tortions, to which his thin white shirt and blue cotton trousers 

 are no impediment. He is almost a complete savage ; his 

 movements are impulsive and uncontrolled, and his handsome 

 face looks as if it belonged to a half-tamed creature out of the 

 "voods. He talks loud, laughs incessantly, croons a monotonous 

 chant, which sounds almost as heathenish as tom-toms, throws 

 himself out of his saddle, hanging on by one foot, lingers behind 

 to gather fruits, and then comes tearing up, beating his horse 

 over the ears and nose, with a fearful yell and a prolonged 

 sound like har-r-rouche, striking my mule and threatening to 

 overturn me as he passes me on the narrow track. He is the 

 most thoroughly careless and irresponsible being I ever saw, 

 reckless about the horses, reckless about himself, without any 

 manners or any obvious sense of right and propriety. In his 

 mouth this musical tongue becomes as harsh as the speech of a 

 cockatoo or parrot. His manner is familiar. He rides up to 

 me, pokes his head under my hat, and says, interrogatively, 

 " Cold !" by which I understand that the poor boy is shivering 

 himself. In eating he plunges his hand into my bowl of fowl, 

 or snatches half my biscuit. Yet I daresay he means well, and 

 I am thoroughly amused with him, except when he maltreats 

 his horse. 



It is a very strange life going about with natives, whose 

 ideas, as shown by their habits, are, to say the least of it, very 

 peculiar. Deborah speaks English fairly, having been brought 

 up by white people, and is a very nice girl. But were she one 

 of our own race I should not suppose her to be more than 

 eleven years old, and she does not seem able to understand my 

 ideas on any subject, though I can be very much interested 

 and amused Avith hearing hers. 



We had a perfect day until the middle of the afternoon. The 

 dimpling Pacific was never more than a mile from us as we 

 kept the narrow track in the long green grass, and on our left 

 the blunt, snow-patched peaks of Mauna Kea rose from the 

 girdle of forest, looking so delusively near that I fancied a two- 

 hours' climb would take us to his lofty summit. The track for 

 twenty-six miles is just in and out of gulches, from 100 to 800 

 feet in depth, all opening on the sea, which sweeps into them 

 in three booming rollers. The candle-nut or kiikui {alenrites 

 triloba) tree, which on the whole predominates, has leaves of a 



