diapason.

Feast-days, banquets, picnics, swimming parties--the Filbertines adore
salt water, which is not potable but thirst-producing--these are the
occasions of a frank and joyous mingling of the sexes.

Before we left the clearing we were treated to a most graceful
spectacle, a performance of the _Ataboi_, a dance descriptive of the
growth and blossoming of the _alova_ flower. This was performed by seven
beautiful girls to an accompaniment of song and clapping. The plaintive
love-motif was unmistakably introduced by a deep-chested dame who played
on the _bazoola_, a primitive instrument fashioned from the stalk of the
figwort (_Scrophulariaceae_). It may interest music lovers to know that
the Filbertines employ the diatetic scale exclusively, four notes in the
ascent and five on the recoil.

At the close of the performance we were shown the nursery compound,
an enclosure teeming with beautiful children, screened by hedges where
the little ones could be heard but not seen.

Two days subsequent to our amble we were invited to a grand banquet
which led to disturbing problems and momentous decision on our part.
This feast was our formal welcome; the keys of the islands, so to
speak, were presented to us. There were ladies present--and everything.

It was served in a special clearing lighted by the moon and countless
_anchoridae_ tied by their legs in festoons, a procedure which causes
them to open and shut their lambent eyes very rapidly, and gave a quaint
cinema effect to the scene. After counting the courses up to
twenty-seven I lost as each was accompanied by a new brand of island