tourist are at one, and has inspired some tasteful poetry. The
period certainly varies with the season; but here is one case
exactly noted. Although the dawn was thus preparing by four, the
sun was not up till six; and it was half-past five before we could
distinguish our expected islands from the clouds on the horizon.
Eight degrees south, and the day two hours a-coming. The interval
was passed on deck in the silence of expectation, the customary
thrill of landfall heightened by the strangeness of the shores that
we were then approaching. Slowly they took shape in the
attenuating darkness. Ua-huna, piling up to a truncated summit,
appeared the first upon the starboard bow; almost abeam arose our
destination, Nuka-hiva, whelmed in cloud; and betwixt and to the
southward, the first rays of the sun displayed the needles of Ua-
pu. These pricked about the line of the horizon; like the
pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in
the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of a
world of wonders.

Not one soul aboard the Casco had set foot upon the islands, or
knew, except by accident, one word of any of the island tongues;
and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure as
thrilled the bosom of discoverers that we drew near these
problematic shores. The land heaved up in peaks and rising vales;
it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty
modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it was
crowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion of vague hues
deceived the eye; the shadows of clouds were confounded with the
articulations of the mountains; and the isle and its unsubstantial
canopy rose and shimmered before us like a single mass. There was
no beacon, no smoke of towns to be expected, no plying pilot.