It Was The Planters' Retreat; And In Their Absence, Several Girls Were Keeping House, Assisted By An Old Native, Who, Wrapped Up In Tappa, Lay In The Corner, Smoking.

A hasty meal was prepared, and after it we essayed a nap; but, alas!

A plague, little anticipated, prevented. Unknown in Tahiti, the mosquitoes here fairly eddied round us. But more of them anon.

We were up betimes, and strolled out to view the country. We were in the valley of Martair; shut in, on both sides, by lofty hills. Here and there were steep cliffs, gay with flowering shrubs, or hung with pendulous vines, swinging blossoms in the air. Of considerable width at the sea, the vale contracts as it runs inland; terminating, at the distance of several miles, in a range of the most grotesque elevations, which seem embattled with turrets and towers, grown over with verdure, and waving with trees. The valley itself is a wilderness of woodland; with links of streams flashing through, and narrow pathways fairly tunnelled through masses of foliage.

All alone, in this wild place, was the abode of the planters; the only one back from the beach - their sole neighbours, the few fishermen and their families, dwelling in a small grove of cocoa-nut trees whose roots were washed by the sea.

The cleared tract which they occupied comprised some thirty acres, level as a prairie, part of which was under cultivation; the whole being fenced in by a stout palisade of trunks and boughs of trees staked firmly in the ground.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 246 of 389
Words from 64988 to 65246 of 103097