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I THINK I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural history
of the valley.

Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came
those dogs that I saw in Typee? Dogs!—Big hairless rats rather;
all with smooth, shining, speckled hides—fat sides, and very disagreeable
faces. Whence could they have come? That they
were not the indigenous production of the region, I am firmly convinced.
Indeed they seemed aware of their being interlopers,
looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide themselves in
some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel at home
in the vale—that they wished themselves well out of it, and back
to the ugly country from which they must have come.

Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked
nothing better than to have been the death of every one of them.
In fact, on one occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine
crusade to Mehevi; but the benevolent king would not consent
to it. He heard me very patiently; but when I had finished,
shook his head, and told me in confidence, that they were
“taboo.”

As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayor
Whittington, I shall never forget the day that I was lying in the

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house about noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and happening
to raise my eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat, which
sat erect in the doorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling
green orbs, like one of those monstrous imps that torment some of
Teniers' saints! I am one of those unfortunate persons, to whom
the sight of these animals is at any time an insufferable annoyance.

Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When
I had a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started
up; the cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house
in pursuit; but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever
saw one in the valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It
is just possible that it might have escaped from one of the ships
at Nukuheva. It was in vain to seek information on the subject
from the natives, since none of them had seen the animal, the
appearance of which remains a mystery to me to this day.

Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee,
there was none which I looked upon with more interest than a
beautiful golden-hued species of lizard. It measured perhaps five
inches from head to tail, and was most gracefully proportioned.
Numbers of those creatures were to be seen basking in the sunshine
upon the thatching of the houses, and multitudes at all hours
of the day showed their glittering sides as they ran frolicking
between the spears of grass, or raced in troops up and down the tall
shafts of the cocoa-nut trees. But the remarkable beauty of these
little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims
upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible
to fear. Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some
shady place during the heat of the day, I would be completely
overrun with them. If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap
perhaps into my hair: when I tried to frighten it away by gently
pinching its leg, it would turn for protection to the very hand
that attacked it.

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The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see
one perched upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced
towards it, it did not fly away immediately, but waited
quietly looking at you, until you could almost touch it, and then
took wing slowly, less alarmed at your presence, it would seem,
than desirous of removing itself from your path. Had salt been
less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the very place to
have gone birding with it.

I remember that once, on an uninhabited island of the Gallipagos,
a bird alighted on my outstretched arm, while its mate
chirped from an adjoining tree. Its tameness, far from shocking
me, as a similar occurrence did Selkirk, imparted to me the most
exquisite thrill of delight I ever experienced; and with somewhat
of the same pleasure did I afterwards behold the birds and
lizards of the valley show their confidence in the kindliness of
man.

Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have
entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental
introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and
ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands
and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving
colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether
the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment,
from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating
the natives materially obstruct the benevolent labors of
the missionaries.

From this grievous visitation, however, the Typees are as yet
wholly exempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree
supplied by the occasional presence of a minute species of fly,
which, without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little
annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing
when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will
perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there, if you

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do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along
the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to
explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate
as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around
me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the
open apartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation
was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the
poor creatures being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their
consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated
into the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards charitably
held my mouth open for at least five minutes, with a view
of affording egress to the stragglers, none of them ever availed
themselves of the opportunity.

There are no wild animals of any kind on the island, unless it
be decided that the natives themselves are such. The mountains
and the interior present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes,
unbroken by the roar of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few
tokens even of minute animated existence. There are no venomous
reptiles, and no snakes of any description to be found in any
of the valleys.

In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no
topic of conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes.
The rainy season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but
they are intermitting and refreshing. When an islander bound
on some expedition rises from his couch in the morning, he is
never solicitous to peep out and see how the sky looks, or ascertain
from what quarter the wind blows. He is always sure of a
“fine day,” and the promise of a few genial showers he hails
with pleasure. There is never any of that “remarkable weather”
on the islands which from time immemorial has been experienced
in America, and still continues to call forth the wondering conversational
exclamations of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even
occur any of those eccentric meteorological changes which

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elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of Typee ice-creams would
never be rendered less acceptable by sudden frosts, nor would
pic-nic parties be deferred on account of inauspicious snow-storms:
for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer
and sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month
of June just melting into July.

It is this genial climate which causes the cocoa-nuts to flourish
as they do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the
rich soil of the Marquesas, and borne aloft on a stately column
more than a hundred feet from the ground, would seem at first
almost inaccessible to the simple natives. Indeed the slender,
smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single limb or protuberance
of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents an obstacle only
to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity of the
islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead
them patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly
parting from their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This
certainly would be the case, were it not that the young fruit,
encased in a soft green husk, with the incipient meat adhering in
a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and containing a bumper of the
most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly prize. They have at
least twenty different terms to express as many progressive stages
in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject the fruit altogether
except at a particular period of its growth, which, incredible
as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain
within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their
tastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages,
and ingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then
from another, as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting
glass in hand among his dusty demijohns of different
vintages.

Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their
comrades, and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of

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walking up the trunk of the cocoa-nut trees which to me seemed
little less than miraculous; and when looking at them in the act,
I experienced that curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds
a fly moving feet uppermost along a ceiling.

I will endeavor to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble
young chief, sometimes performed this feat for my particular
gratification; but his preliminary performances must also be
recorded. Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck
me the young fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage,
throwing himself into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment
at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this
position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance
soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will,
and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he
stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as
though endeavoring to reach the fruit from the ground where he
stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to
the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair;
and then, starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his
head, raises both hands, like a school-boy about to catch a falling
ball. After continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation
that the fruit was going to be tossed down to him by some
good spirit in the tree-top, he turns wildly round in another fit of
despair, and scampers off to the distance of thirty or forty yards.
Here he remains awhile, eyeing the tree, the very picture of
misery; but the next moment, receiving, as it were, a flash of
inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping both arms
about the trunk, with one elevated a little above the other, he
presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree,
extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and
his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over hand
and foot after foot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity,
and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and

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embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit
to the ground.

This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the
trunk declines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however,
is almost always the case; some of the perfectly straight
shafts of the trees leaning at an angle of thirty degrees.

The less active among the men, and many of the children of
the valley, have another method of climbing. They take a broad
and stout piece of bark, and secure either end of it to their
ankles: so that when the feet thus confined are extended apart, a
space of little more than twelve inches is left between them.
This contrivance greatly facilitates the act of climbing. The
band pressed against the tree, and closely embracing it, yields a
pretty firm support; while with the arms clasped about the
trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body, the feet are
drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding elevation
of the hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen
little children, scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the
slender pole of a young cocoa-nut tree, and while hanging perhaps
fifty feet from the ground, receiving the plaudits of their parents
beneath, who clapped their hands, and encouraged them to mount
still higher.

What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions,
would the nervous mothers of America and England say to a
similar display of hardihood in any of their children? The
Lacedemonian nation might have approved of it, but most modern
dames would have gone into hysterics at the sight.

At the top of the cocoa-nut tree the numerous branches, radiating
on all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and waving
basket, between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts
thickly clustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no
bigger from the ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one
adventurous little fellow—Too-Too was the rascal's name—who

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had built himself a sort of aerial baby-house in the picturesque
tuft of a tree adjoining Marheyo's habitation. He used to spend
hours there,—rustling among the branches, and shouting with
delight every time the strong gusts of wind rushing down from
the mountain side, swayed to and fro the tall and flexible column
on which he was perched. Whenever I heard Too-Too's musical
voice sounding strangely to the ear from so great a height, and
beheld him peeping down upon me from out his leafy covert, he
always recalled to my mind Dibdin's lines—

“There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To look out for the life of poor Jack.”

Birds—bright and beautiful birds—fly over the valley of Typee.
You see them perched aloft among the immovable boughs of the
majestic bread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the elastic
branches of the Omoo; skimming over the palmetto thatching of
the bamboo huts; passing like spirits on the wing through the
shadows of the grove, and sometimes descending into the bosom
of the valley in gleaming flights from the mountains. Their
plumage is purple and azure, crimson and white, black and gold;
with bills of every tint;—bright bloody-red, jet black, and ivory
white; and their eyes are bright and sparkling; they go sailing
through the air in starry throngs; but, alas! the spell of
dumbness is upon them all—there is not a single warbler in the
valley!

I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally
the ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy.
As in their dumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking,
or looked down upon me with steady curious eyes from out
the foliage, I was almost inclined to fancy that they knew they
were gazing upon a stranger, and that they commiserated his
fate.

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