red, brown, and green coral, rising from the mass below. Before us, on
the shore, there spread the rich growth of tropical vegetation, shaded
by palms and cocoa-nuts, and enlivened by the presence of native women
in red, blue, and green garments, and men in motley costumes, bringing
fish, fowls, and bunches of cocoa-nuts, borne, like the grapes brought
back from the land of Canaan by the spies, on poles.

As soon as we touched the shore the men rushed forward to meet us, and
to shake hands, and, having left the muskets and revolvers judiciously
out of sight in the boat, we were conducted to a cluster of huts, made
of branches, or rather leaves, of the palm-tree, tied by their
foot-stalks across two poles, and hanging down to the ground. Here we
were met by the women and children, who, likewise, all went through
the ceremony of shaking hands with us, after which the head-woman, who
was very good-looking, and was dressed in a cherry-coloured calico
gown, with two long plaits of black hair hanging down her back, spread
a mat for me to sit upon just outside the hut. By this time there was
quite a little crowd of people assembled round, amongst whom I noticed
one woman with a baby, who had her hair sticking straight out all
round her head, and another who held a portion of her dress constantly
before her face. After the gentlemen had walked away she removed the
cloth, and I then saw that her nose had been cut off. Most of the
women were good-looking, with dark complexions and quantities of
well-greased, neatly-plaited black hair, but we did not see a single
young girl, though there were plenty of children and babies, and lots
of boys, the latter of whom, like some of the older women, had only a
piece of palm matting round their loins. We therefore came to the
conclusion that the girls must have been sent away intentionally when
the approach of the yacht was observed.