in most original style, with large patchwork quilts. These are the joy and pride of the Tahitian women, and so artistic in design as to be really ornamental.

To speak correctly, I should call this repast a faaa-mua-i.e., a feeding: our fish should have been wrapped in plantain-leaves, and broiled on the embers; the pigs baked on hot stones in earth ovens, where the peeled bread-fruit and bunches of faes, or mountain - plantain, should likewise have been cooked; and the only salt provided should have been a little sea-water in a cocoa-nut shell. But Tahiti has gone ahead so fast, that I cannot answer for how things are done nowadays. I know that, instead of vegetable plates-i.e., layers of large round hybiscus-leaves - we ate off foreign plates, with knives and forks of best electro-plate, and drank our red wine from clearest crystal glasses, and snowy napkins were not forgotten.

There was a considerable consumption of raw fish, which is considered a very great delicacy, and one for which many foreigners acquire a strong liking. There is no accounting for tastes. King Ariiaue, who takes great care of me at meals, has been trying to teach me this enjoyment, and on my objecting, declares it is mere prejudice, as of course I eat oysters raw-we might almost say alive. To this I can answer nothing, well remembering the savage delight with which we have often knocked

UNGRACEFUL DANCES.

5

our own oysters off rocks and branches, and swallowed them on the instant! But then they are so small, and some of these fish are very large. Perhaps one's instinctive objection is to their size. Those most in favour are of a most exquisite green colour.

During breakfast, and afterwards, the glee-singers of the district sang himènes, which are the national music-most strange and beautiful part - songs. Afterwards dancing was suggested; but only a few men volunteered to show us the Upa-upa―i.e., the old national dance-which is merely an exceedingly ungraceful wriggle, involving violent exertion, till every muscle quivers, and the dancer retires panting, and in a condition of vulgar heat. It is the identical dance which we saw at the Arab wedding at Port Said, and in various other countriesalways an unpleasant exhibition. Happily the band struck up some gay air, which delighted the people; and it continued to play till four o'clock, when our procession again formed, and another lovely drive along the shore brought us to Paea.

This is a charmingly situated hamlet of clean, comfortable houses, only divided from the white coral-sand by a belt of green turf and fine old ironwood trees. Here our night quarters were assigned to us; and certainly we are in clover. I am now sitting in "my own room "-one of four good bed

rooms, opening off a large centre room,-all fresh and clean, and gay with bright quilts and snowy linen. The king and queen, and all the officers, and the band, have their quarters in different houses.

But the pride of the district is its very large house for public entertainment, a long building, rounded at both ends like the Tongan houses, with heavy thatch, and very light bamboo sides, quite transparent. Here dinner was laid, in European style, for 300 guests,—an upper table at one end, where the chiefs of the district entertained the royal party. Other tables were ranged down each side of the building,—each family in the neighbourhood undertaking to provide for one, and there assemble their own friends. The whole great building is beautifully decorated in Tahitian style, with palm-leaves and tree-ferns, and festoons of deep fringe, made of hybiscus fibre, all dyed either yellow or white: there must be miles of this fringe on that house. Yellow is happily admitted in Court mourning; so the majority of the people have either a yellow neck-tie, or some yellow flowers in their hats -a symptom of mitigated affliction, to express the pleasure that now mingles in their grief for the good queen.

"Le Roi est mort,-Vive le Roi!"

But everywhere, we find all the people clothed in

HOW TO MAKE REVA-REVA.

7

long black robes, with black hats and cropped hair, instead of the customary bright colours, long glossy tresses, and gay wreaths. Here, even the district flag-staff is adorned with a deep fringe of black fibre.

We went to dinner in most orthodox fashion, the admiral conducting Marau, and Ariiaue taking me. The feast was warranted to be entirely à l'indigène, —all native dishes; but its great charm consisted in the table decorations, which were most ingenious and effective. Apparently each table had a series of white marble centre-vases, which, on close inspection, proved to be graduated lumps of the thick fleshy banana-stalk. In these were arranged all manner of artificial flowers, made of coloured leaves, or of the glossy white arrowroot fibre, or bamboo fibre, which are used in making wreaths and hats; and from some there floated a silvery plume of the lightest silky film, like fairy ribbons. This is the snowy reva-reva, extracted from the interior of young cocoa-palm leaves-a difficult operation, requiring the neatest hand and long practice. As yet, I cannot produce more than a few inches unbroken. The worker keeps a split stick, stuck in the ground beside her, and into its cleft fastens one end of each ribbon as she peels it, otherwise the faintest breath of air would blow it away. It is the loveliest gossamer you can imagine.

At the end of the feast Tamatoa gave the example of adorning his own hat and those of his neighbours with these lovely plumes, and all the pretty arrowroot and bamboo flowers. Then we adjourned to the grassy shore, and watched the clear full moon rise from the calm sea, while the glee-singers sang their soft beautiful choruses. A few men and one or two women began the same hideous dance with which they had favoured the company in the forenoon, but they met with small encouragement, and the singers carried the dayor rather the night.

I wish it were possible for me to describe Tahitian himènes so as to give you the faintest shadow of an idea of their fascination. But the thing is utterly impossible. Nothing you have ever heard in any other country bears the slightest resemblance to these wild exquisite glees, faultless in time and harmony, though apparently each singer introduces any variations that occur to him or her.

The musicians sit on the grass-or the mats, as the case may be,-in two divisions, arranged in rows so as to form two squares. A space is left between these where the "conductor," should there chance to be one, walks up and down, directing the choBut very often there is no leader, and apparently all sing according to their own sweet will. One voice commences: it may be an old native

ruses.