170 
SOMERSET 
CHAP. 
We certainly are far from the fetters of civilisation 
here ; the two native villages we passed were most 
unsavoury, with a strong suspicion of dead shark and 
other such delicacies about them. Here we bought 
curios from the natives, who seemed a surly race. I 
bought a curiously-shaped spear, very heavy, with an 
oblong-formed end ; the natives told me that it was 
more than a hundred years old, and was used in battles 
long ago by the chief of the tribe, who carried it. It 
is curiously marked all the way down with lettering, 
noting the battles it had been used in. They would 
not part with it for a long time, but at the last moment, 
as we were leaving, they brought it to me, and I 
bought it for five pounds. As it is about twelve feet 
long, it is rather an awkward treasure to carry . 1 
A strong hot moist wind was blowing, and we 
were glad enough to get back, and to sit under the 
shade of the cocoa-nut palms ; a thunderstorm was 
coming on, and the air swarmed with insect life. Birds, 
who are always good barometers, were flying in from 
sea for shelter. The whole air resounded with the 
shrill cry of gulls and gannets ; a shoal of small fish, 
like herrings, came close in to shore, and the birds above 
kept dropping like stones on them, sending up fountains 
and sprays of water all round ; as the shoal turned 
from the coast and went out to sea again, they left a 
long rippling trail of water behind them, and far into 
the dim distance our eyes could follow their course by 
the cloud of sea-gulls which hovered above them. 
We bought some biscuits from “Yankee Ned,” the 
only white man here, who keeps a primitive kind of 
store, and trades with these islanders. 
It was almost dark before we got on board ; the 
1 It was subsequently lost, and after some months of travelling along 
the coast in different steamers, it finally found its way back to me. 
