Chap. XVllL— B. P.] UNSOPHISTICATED NATURE. 297 
Pomare, at Tahiti, on the occasion of a grand reception 
on hoard the French Admiral’s ship, when her Majesty 
came to a full stop before one of the seamen, who, 
after the manner of his class, had a figure of his 
Polly in red, hand in hand with himself in blue, tat¬ 
tooed on his breast. 
Staring intently and admiringly at this work of art, 
the queen manifested a desire, to the intense horror of 
the French officers assembled in full uniform on the 
quarter-deck, in honour of the occasion, to prove prac¬ 
tically that she also was an animated picture-gallery, 
and inasmuch as she was dressed as lightly as the 
Mosquitian princess, with this only difference that she 
wore a green silk instead of a cotton print, it would 
have been an easy matter for her to demean herself in 
a manner unbefitting her sex and her station, had not 
one of the aforesaid officers, with national agility, in¬ 
terposed and driven away the abashed seaman with his 
too attractive cartoon,—followed, I am sorry to say, by 
a guttural chorus of a favourite French expletive, be¬ 
ginning with an S,—it was not sucre. But to leave 
Polynesia and return to Mosquito,—the ladies seemed 
to exercise considerable influence over their kingly 
relative, and there was an unaffected quiet dignity 
about the queen-mother which struck me very for¬ 
cibly ; indeed, I afterwards found that the women in 
this country are far better treated than is usual with 
savage or semi-civilized nations or tribes. 
Before taking leave, lemonade and tamarind water 
were brought in, but I did not observe the national 
drink of Central America, “ Tiste,” which, on inquiry, 
