A.—3b

48

there's good stories in it—specially that part about the pirates." " Indeed," said I, " you must bo mistaken ; there's no such thing in the Bible." " Oh, yes," continued he, " don't you remember where Eobinson Crusoe gets taken by the Turkish pirate ?" I laughed very much, but was quite unable to convince him of his mistake. He said that a seaman who had been cast away upon his father's island had been used to read the tale aloud to them from a large book, " and I know," concluded he, " that the book was a Bible, for it was nearly half as big as a brandy case." The reckless manner in which some of these half-savage mariners stroll about the coral seas is not a little remarkable. Thus, one Harry Williams, of Manihiki, went from Maldon to his own island, a distance of 500 miles, in a flat-bottomed punt, accompanied by natives. George Prescott (a cousin of the author of " The Conquest of Mexico") sailed from Tahiti to Samoa in a whale-boat, not much less than 1,500 miles the route he made of it. Captain Jeff Strickland took a schooner's boat of seven tons from Fiji to Sydney to be coppered ; from Sydney he sailed to Tahiti with no companions but one man, a Polynesian woman, and a boy of 11 years of age. Upon this passage he lay to with her for five days through a living gale of wind off the North Cape of New Zealand. Afterwards he ran her for a matter of three years beche-de-mer fishing, all over the South Sea to windward of Tonga, which is no small thing even for a big ship to do, counting the hurricane months. (This remarkable little craft, which was known as the " Gonamarama," was swamped in 1871 by a waterspout off the coast of Tutuila; the crew swam ashore.) Besides this kind of semi-barbarous adventurers, there are many shipmasters and merchants who have been long used to sail vessels of from 30 to 100 tons, chiefly out of the ports of Tahiti, Honolulu, Guam, or Manilla, in quest of beche-de-mer, whose practice it is to frequent such great lagoon atolls as it is possible to get inside of and come to an anchor. There they lie up for months, until their cargo is complete. They land their trypots and other requisities, build some palmleaf huts to lodge their men, and a smoke-house for the curing of the fish, and have usually a jolly time of it. The labour of collecting and drying the fish is performed partly by their crews, who are commonly Polynesian natives—with the exception of the mate, and perhaps trading master or interpreter —and such islanders as they bring along with them, if it be a desert and uninhabited place, or otherwise the aborigines whom they find in possession. Women are in great requisition on these kind of expeditions, they being well up to the work, willing and good-tempered, and much more easy to control than the like number of men. Traders who have much experience of this pursuit universally admit the desirability of in all cases engaging an equal number of women to that of the men concerned in the enterprise. Neglect of this arrangement has in many instances led to serious quarrels, maroonings, the taking of men's lives, and the like disagreeableness. There is a sort of charm about this kind of occupation which the dwellers in the Babel of civilization, might be at a loss to comprehend— an elasticity of spirits arising from the consciousness of perfect liberty and absolute release from all conventional restraint, a total oblivion of all debts or duties, and entire exemption from any form of mental anxiety. There is a certain amount of reason in this. To spend one's days in a rock-bound haven where the waters are eternally at rest, no matter what storms may raise the sea which rolls outside the coral barrier. To run about barefoot upon silvery sands, where the cool sea-breeze all the year round conquers the sultriness of the tropic sunshine. To paddle about upon the still waters of a calm lagoon, whose limpid waves display beneath them an infinity of strange and beautiful forms. To sleep softly and to dream sweetly, sung to rest by the ceaseless sounding of the distant sea, and rustling of the night wind among the feathery palms. To know nothing of what is going on in the outer world, and to care as little. To have no ideas beyond those included within the horizon of vision ; to climb to the summit of some lofty tree, and to see at one glance all which constitutes for ourself the material universe—to wit, a calm green lake, a circlet of verdant islets and snow-white sandy beaches, a coral reef bathed in a sheet of dazzling foam, and, outside of all, the vast circle of the restless ocean, more intensely blue from contrast with the cloudless sky ; with nothing to relieve its oppressive monotony but, may be, the rainbow spume of some spouting whalefish, or the glancing pinions of the lone sea-birds. There is one advantage in beche-de-mer fishing, that upon the great desert reefs where it most abounds the fisher never needs to be idle. In calm weather they gather the red kind off the top of the reef, just inside the foam of the breakers ; in stormy times they dive for the black species inside the lagoon. From its size and colour it is plainly visible to a depth of at least ten fathoms, even when the water is much ruffled by the wind, —the more so as it lives only on the smooth white sandy bottom. The material required for the prosecution of this business is of the most limited character —merely a boat, a few axes to cut building materials and firewood, a supply of long knives for all hands, and, in some cases, two or three of the great cast-iron boilers (or trypots), such as are used on board of whale ships, with buckets and forks of many prongs, of that kind which, on gold diggings, the miners use to stir the gravel in their sluice-boxes. The first preliminary operation is to build two houses —one for the curing of the fish, which is done by smoking (just as people smoke bacon), the other for the purpose of storing it after being sufficiently cured, These are mere sheds rudely thatched with palm leaves, and closed round on all sides with coarse mats of the same material. The thatch must be perfectly water-tight, for the reason that although salt water takes no effect upon cured beche-de-mer, and will not injure it in any way, rain water will entirely destroy it. The smoke-house is built of an oblong shape, having inside of it two sets of stages made of thin sticks or split palm branches fastened horizontally to a strong framework; a narrow passage is left between them, and underneath them are two drains dug in the ground wherein to make fires to create smoke. No nails are required in their construction, all the lastenings of the woodwork being of cocoa-nut fibre. The terms upon which the labourers are engaged for bechc-de-mer fishing depends on the circumstances of the case. Beachcombers who have native wives and families commonly make up a party of their wives' relations and near neighbours, and remunerate them for their work by sharing with them a part of the proceeds. Adventurers who sail small vessels, and have no settled home on the islands to which the labourers belong, hire them for a specified time at a fixed rate of wages, under a written agreement, which is witnessed by their king. Although in the majority of cases no one understands the document but the white men concerned in its concoction, yet the most ignorant barbarians are