have made a worse selection; the chief could not master it.
'Tommo,' 'Tomma', 'Tommee', everything but plain 'Tom'. As he
persisted in garnishing the word with an additional syllable, I
compromised the matter with him at the word 'Tommo'; and by that
name I went during the entire period of my stay in the valley.
The same proceeding was gone through with Toby, whose mellifluous
appellation was more easily caught.

An exchange of names is equivalent to a ratification of good will
and amity among these simple people; and as we were aware of this
fact, we were delighted that it had taken place on the present
occasion.

Reclining upon our mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving
audience to successive troops of the natives, who introduced
themselves to us by pronouncing their respective names, and
retired in high good humour on receiving ours in return. During
this ceremony the greatest merriment prevailed nearly every
announcement on the part of the islanders being followed by a
fresh sally of gaiety, which induced me to believe that some of
them at least were innocently diverting the company at our
expense, by bestowing upon themselves a string of absurd titles,
of the humour of which we were of course entirely ignorant.

All this occupied about an hour, when the throng having a little
diminished, I turned to Mehevi and gave him to understand that we
were in need of food and sleep. Immediately the attentive chief
addressed a few words to one of the crowd, who disappeared, and
returned in a few moments with a calabash of 'poee-poee', and two
or three young cocoanuts stripped of their husks, and with their