intimate. Fencing with Kua-ko was highly amusing: no sooner was
he in position, foil in hand, than all my instructions were
thrown to the winds, and he would charge and attack me in his own
barbarous manner, with the result that I would send his foil
spinning a dozen yards away, while he, struck motionless, would
gaze after it in open-mouthed astonishment.

Three weeks had passed by not unpleasantly when, one morning, I
took it into my head to walk by myself across that somewhat
sterile savannah west of the village and stream, which ended, as
I have said, in a long, low, stony ridge. From the village there
was nothing to attract the eye in that direction; but I wished to
get a better view of that great solitary hill or mountain of
Ytaioa, and of the cloud-like summits beyond it in the distance.
From the stream the ground rose in a gradual slope, and the
highest part of the ridge for which I made was about two miles
from the starting-point--a parched brown plain, with nothing
growing on it but scattered tussocks of sere hair-like grass.

When I reached the top and could see the country beyond, I was
agreeably disappointed at the discovery that the sterile ground
extended only about a mile and a quarter on the further side, and
was succeeded by a forest--a very inviting patch of woodland
covering five or six square miles, occupying a kind of oblong
basin, extending from the foot of Ytaioa on the north to a low
range of rocky hills on the south. From the wooded basin long
narrow strips of forest ran out in various directions like the
arms of an octopus, one pair embracing the slopes of Ytaioa,
another much broader belt extending along a valley which cut
through the ridge of hills on the south side at right angles and