322 Wild. Life in Southern Seas. 
of rapture of the exquisite scenery of the island 
and of the pleasing and engaging manners of 
its light-skinned Malayo-Polynesian inhabitants, 
who had not then been decimated by measles, 
small-pox, and other terrible epidemics ot 
European origin. For a score of years pre¬ 
viously there had been living on the island 
some few white men, wanderers from the 
Marquesas and Society Groups and other 
islands to the north and east. All these were 
married to native women, and the “ remarkable 
beauty of form and feature that characterised 
the pure-blooded natives themselves, seemed if 
possible, to be intensified in the children re¬ 
sulting from these so-called ‘ illegitimate ’ alli¬ 
ances.” Earning an easy and comfortable living 
by trading with the natives of the adjacent 
islands for pearl shell and pearls, these white 
wanderers and adventurers, so often erroneously 
called “ beach-combers ” by the average writer, 
passed their lives in peace and comfort, and 
their descendants may to-day be found through¬ 
out the islands of the South-eastern Pacific. 
At the present time Rapa is but rarely heard 
of, for with the abandonment of the Panama- 
Sydney mail service about the year 1868, it 
