3 2 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
The early meal of fish and taro has been eaten, 
and every one is lying down, for the smooth 
white pebbles of sea-worn coral that cover the 
ground around the high-roofed houses of pan- 
danus thatch are hot even to the native foot, 
though here and there may be a cool strip of 
darkened shade from the overhanging branch 
of palm or breadfruit tree. Look through the 
open doorway of a house. There they lie, the 
brown-skinned lazy people, upon the cool 
matted floor, each one with a wooden aluga , 
or bamboo pillow, under his or her head, with 
their long black tresses of hair lying loosely 
uncoiled about the shoulders. Only three 
people are in this house, a big reddish-brown 
skinned man, a middle-aged woman, and a 
young girl. The man’s and woman’s heads 
are on the one pillow ; between them lies the 
mutual pipe smoked out in connubial amity ; 
the girl lies over in the corner beside a heap 
of young drinking coconuts and a basket of 
taro and fish, her slender figure clothed in 
nought but a thick girdle of fine pandanus 
leaf. She, too, has been smoking, for in her 
little hand is the half of a cigarette. 
A wandering pig, attracted by the smell of 
