These were two sleeping
apartments, a _salon_, and a _salle a manger_, the walls of which
consisted of flat pieces of wood, their own width apart, something
like Venetian shutters, with unglazed windows and doors opening into
the garden.
We walked about four hundred yards along a grassy road to the sea,
where Mabelle and I paddled about in shallow water and amused
ourselves by picking up coral, shells, and _beche-de-mer_, and
watching the blue and yellow fish darting in and out among the rocks,
until at last we found a place in the coral which made a capital
deep-water bath. Dressing again was not such a pleasant affair, owing
to the mosquitoes biting us in the most provoking manner. Afterwards
we strolled along the shore, which was covered with cocoa-nuts and
driftwood, washed thither, I suppose, from some of the adjacent
islands, and on our way back to the hotel we gathered a handful of
choice exotics and graceful ferns, with which to decorate the table.
The dinner itself really deserves a detailed description, if only to
show that one may make the tour of Tahiti without necessarily having
to rough it in the matter of food. We had crayfish and salad as a
preliminary, and next, an excellent soup followed by delicious little
oysters, that cling to the boughs and roots of the guava and mangrove
trees overhanging the sea.
Pages:
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325