262 
CRUISE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
manned by half a dozen savages, armed with bows, 
arrows, spears, and stone hatchets. It was decided 
to shift our position for one farther np the bay ; and 
as the screw made its first revolution, the astonished 
natives pointed their arrows at it, as if they expected 
some enemy to rise from the foaming waters. 
Slowly we steamed on our way, followed by all the 
canoes on starboard and port sides doing their utmost 
to keep pace with us. 
At this moment the scene before us was probably 
the most novel and most impressive of all that 
had been witnessed in the course of the expedition. 
Above a sunny sky, swept by a morning breeze ; in 
the background the hilly shores of the bay, covered 
with the most luxuriant foliage, the trees crowding 
down to the water’s edge, and dipping their boughs 
into the white breakers ; around us a moving mass 
of dark brown figures, some decked with leaves, 
flowers, and birds’ feathers, others in enormous 
frizzled wigs and all the savage glory of war-paint, 
breastplates, bows, and arrows — all joining in a 
monotonous chant, in unison with the sound of 
the conch-shell ; in the centre the Challenger , at this 
moment the only representative of Western civilisa- 
tion in this rarely visited region — a period of two 
thousand years of progress separating us from the 
people we had come to see. It was intended to re- 
main near the shore off one of the villages, but no 
safe anchorage could be found; the bottom seemed 
