subjection! Sixty-eight pounders to demolish huts of cocoanut
boughs, and Congreve rockets to set on fire a few canoe sheds!

At Nukuheva, there were about one hundred soldiers ashore. They
were encamped in tents, constructed of the old sails and spare
spars of the squadron, within the limits of a redoubt mounted
with a few nine-pounders, and surrounded with a fosse. Every
other day, these troops were marched out in martial array, to a
level piece of ground in the vicinity, and there for hours went
through all sorts of military evolutions, surrounded by flocks of
the natives, who looked on with savage admiration at the show,
and as savage a hatred of the actors. A regiment of the Old
Guard, reviewed on a summer's day in the Champs Elysees, could
not have made a more critically correct appearance. The
officers' regimentals, resplendent with gold lace and embroidery
as if purposely calculated to dazzle the islanders, looked as if
just unpacked from their Parisian cases.

The sensation produced by the presence of the strangers had not
in the least subsided at the period of our arrival at the
islands. The natives still flocked in numbers about the
encampment, and watched with the liveliest curiosity everything
that was going forward. A blacksmith's forge, which had been set
up in the shelter of a grove near the beach, attracted so great a
crowd, that it required the utmost efforts of the sentries posted
around to keep the inquisitive multitude at a sufficient distance
to allow the workmen to ply their vocation. But nothing gained
so large a share of admiration as a horse, which had been brought
from Valparaiso by the Achille, one of the vessels of the
squadron. The animal, a remarkably fine one, had been taken