slowly, owing to the soaked condition of the ground. If you can
imagine the Kew hot-houses magnified and multiplied to an indefinite
extent, and laid out as a gentleman's park, traversed by numerous
grassy roads fringed with cocoa-nut palms, and commanding occasional
glimpses of sea, and beach, and coral reefs, you will have some faint
idea of the scene through which our road lay.

Many rivers we crossed, and many we stuck in, the gentlemen having
more than once to take off their shoes and stockings, tuck up their
trousers, jump into the water, and literally put their shoulders to
the wheel. Sometimes we drove out into the shallow sea, till it seemed
doubtful when and where we should make the land again. Sometimes we
climbed up a solid road, blasted out of the face of the black cliffs,
or crept along the shore of the tranquil lagoon, frightening the
land-crabs into their holes as they felt the shake of the approaching
carriage. Palms and passiflora abounded, the latter being specially
magnificent. It seems wonderful how their thin steins can support, at
a height of thirty or forty feet from the ground, the masses of huge
orange-coloured fruit which depend in strings from their summits.

At the third river, not far from where it fell into the sea, we
thought it was time to lunch; so we stopped the carriage, gave the
horses their provender, and sat down to enjoy ourselves after our long
drive. It was early in the afternoon before we started again, and soon
after this we were met by fresh horses, sent out from Papenoo;[10] so
it was not long before we found ourselves near Point Venus, where we
once more came upon a good piece of road, down which we rattled to the
plains outside Papeete.

[Footnote 10: From 'pape,' _water_, and 'noo,' _abundance_.]