PORTER’S JOURNAL. 
U2 
The animals of the reptile kind are lizards and centipieds*-*- 
of the first, from some superstitious notions, the natives are very 
much afraid, as they are also of their eggs; they are the common 
small lizard, and perfectly harmless. Of the centipieds, which 
are considered by us as poisonous, they appear to be nowise 
afraid, and small children will amuse themselves with them on 
chips and sticks, but I never saw any of them handle them. 
Cockroaches and flies were very numerous, and the latter 
very troublesome, as well also as a small kind of knat, the bite of 
which often becomes much inflamed and very sore and painful; 
they insinuate themselves under the wristbands, inside the collar, 
behind the ears, under the trowsers, See. and the pain of their sting 
can be compared only to splinters on fire thrust into the flesh: but 
what seems very extraordinary, after being a few weeks on the 
island they are no longer troublesome. With the cockroaches 
we were soon infested on board the ship; they were taken on 
board in the sails, the wood, and in the seamen’s clothing; for every 
night when they came on shore on liberty, their blankets, and fre¬ 
quently their mattrasses were brought with them, which were 
generally well stocked by those animals on their return on board. 
We found here the common dunghill fowl, in small num¬ 
bers; they appear to be esteemed only for the plumage of the 
cocks; three or four were brought to me as presents by the chiefs 
of the tribes, but the tail feathers of all had been previously pluck* 
ed out; hens we saw none either in our valley or that of the Hap- 
pahs; and although several cocks were seen in the valley of the 
Typees, no hens were among them. This scarcity of hens seems 
somewhat unaccountable, and had I not seen some cocks very 
young, I should be induced to believe, they were brought for 
traffic from some of the other islands; but it can hardly be sup¬ 
posed that any of those, islanders are such adepts in trade as to 
prevent (with views to their own gain) the bred from getting to 
Nooaheevah: it seems probable that where there are cocks there 
are also hens. The hens are, perhaps, disregarded and permit¬ 
ted to run wild, or are killed and eaten, while the cocks only are 
preserved for the beauty of the plumage. 
The island affords a variety of birds, four of which only I 
had an opportunity of examining. A dove, which is very abui> 
