Delighted As I Was, However, With The Beauty Of The Objects Around Me, I Was No Less Pleased With Those Beneath.

Our boat glided along over countless shallows, where the water was as clear as crystal, so that the smallest pebble at the bottom was distinctly visible.

I could observe groups and clusters of coloured coral and madrepore- stone, whose magnificence challenges all description. It might be said that there was a quantity of fairy flower and kitchen gardens in the sea, full of gigantic flowers, blossoms, and leaves, varied by fungi and pulse of every description, like open arabesque work, the whole interspersed with pretty groups of rocks of every hue. The most lovely shell-fish were clinging to these rocks, or lying scattered on the ground, while endless shoals of variegated fish darted in and out between them, like so many butterflies and humming-birds. These delicate creatures were scarcely four inches long, and surpassed in richness of colour anything I had ever seen. Many of them were of the purest sky-blue, others a light yellow, while some, again, that were almost transparent, were brown, green, etc.

On our arrival at Paya, about 6 in the evening, the young Tati had a pig, weighing eighteen or twenty pounds, killed and cooked, after the fashion of Tahiti, in honour of his father. A large fire was kindled in a shallow pit, in which were a number of stones. A quantity of bread-fruit (majore), that had been first peeled and split into two portions with a very sharp wooden axe, was then brought.

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Words from 44018 to 44282 of 187810