water ahead of the vessel. At first I imagined it to be produced
by a shoal of fish sporting on the surface, but our savage
friends assured us that it was caused by a shoal of 'whinhenies'
(young girls), who in this manner were coming off from the shore
to welcome is. As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising and
sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing
above the water the girdle of tappa, and their long dark hair
trailing beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be
nothing else than so many mermaids--and very like mermaids they
behaved too.

We were still some distance from the beach, and under slow
headway, when we sailed right into the midst of these swimming
nymphs, and they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold
of the chain-plates and springing into the chains; others, at the
peril of being run over by the vessel in her course, catching at
the bob-stays, and wreathing their slender forms about the ropes,
hung suspended in the air. All of them at length succeeded in
getting up the ship's side, where they clung dripping with the
brine and glowing from the bath, their jet-black tresses
streaming over their shoulders, and half enveloping their
otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage
vivacity, laughing gaily at one another, and chattering away with
infinite glee. Nor were they idle the while, for each one
performed the simple offices of the toilette for the other.
Their luxuriant locks, wound up and twisted into the smallest
possible compass, were freed from the briny element; the whole
person carefully dried, and from a little round shell that passed
from hand to hand, anointed with a fragrant oil: their adornments
were completed by passing a few loose folds of white tappa, in a