378 
MISSIONARY TOUR 
and few ships leave without being accompanied part 
of the way out of the harbour by the natives, sport¬ 
ing in the water; but to see fifty or a hundred per¬ 
sons riding on an immense billow, half immersed in 
spray and foam, for a distance of several hundred 
yards together, is one of the most novel and interest¬ 
ing sports a foreigner can witness in the islands. 
When we arrived at the house of Arapai, we were 
welcomed by his wife and several members of his 
family. 
Mr. Thurston walked up to the head of the valley, 
to number the houses and speak to the people. At 
one of the villages through which he passed, about 150 
of the inhabitants assembled, to whom he preached. 
The people w r ere interested, and several of them fol¬ 
lowed him down to the chief's house near the beach. 
Shortly after his return, the chief came home, and some 
breakfast of salt fish and taro was provided, of which 
we partook with the family. 
Arapai is evidently a chief of some importance. We 
saw several large double canoes in his out-houses. The 
number of his domestics was greater than usual; his 
house was large, well built, and stocked with a number 
of useful articles, among which we noticed some large 
and handsomely stained calabashes, marked with a 
variety of devices. The calabash is a large kind of 
gourd, sometimes capable of holding four or five gallons. 
It is used to contain water and other fluids, by the 
natives of all the islands in the South Sea; but the 
art of staining it is peculiar to the Sandwich Islanders, 
and is another proof of their superior powers of in¬ 
vention and ingenuity. When the calabash has grown 
to its full size, they empty it in the usual manner, by 
