Just as we returned, a gentleman came and asked me if I should like to
see some remarkably fine pearls, and on my gladly consenting, he took
me to his house, where I saw some pearls certainly worth going to look
at, but too expensive for me, one pear-shaped gem alone having been
valued at 1,000_l_. I was told they came from a neighbouring island,
and I was given two shells containing pearls in various stages of
formation.
It was now time to go on board to receive some friends whom we had
invited to breakfast, and who arrived at about half-past eleven.
[Illustration: A Tahitian Lady.]
After breakfast, and a chat, and an examination of the photograph
books, &c., we all landed, and went to see Messrs. Brander's stores,
where all sorts of requisites for fitting out ships and their crews
can be procured. It is surprising to find how plentiful are the
supplies of the necessaries and even the luxuries of civilised life in
this far-away corner of the globe. You can even get _ice_ here, for
the manufacture of which a retired English infantry officer has set up
an establishment with great success. But what interested me most were
the products of this and the neighbouring islands. There were tons of
exquisitely tinted pearl shells, six or eight inches in diameter,
formerly a valuable article of commerce, but now worth comparatively
little.
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