A few scattered huts raised on the margin of the little river, gave tokens of human habitation. In one of these, occupied by an old married pair, our travellers passed the first night. Maititi seemed to consider himself quite on a foraging party, and Mr. Hoffman was under the necessity of begging him to moderate his zeal, and leave the care of the entertainment to their host. The old man fetched a pig, and Maititi, with great dexterity, played the part both of butcher and cook. Mr. Hoffman describes the operation of lighting the fire on this occasion, in the following manner:--A Tahaitian took two pieces of wood of different degrees of hardness, laid the softer upon the ground, and very rapidly rubbed its length backwards and forwards with the harder. This made a furrow, in which the dust rubbed from the wood collected, and soon became hot; it was then shaken among dry leaves and burst into a flame. The whole process seemed easy and quick; but Mr. Hoffman could not succeed in it though he made many attempts. Before supper, the master of the house recited a prayer aloud, the family repeating it after him, but not audibly. They then ate a hearty but silent meal, and prayed again before lying down to sleep. The couch offered to Mr. Hoffman was a raised platform in the hut, thickly spread with mats, with a pair of sheets of the Tahaitian manufacture, called Tapa, for its covering. The volubility of his guides, restrained during the repast by the more important business of satisfying their appetites, now broke out to his great disturbance. They chattered almost incessantly during great part of the night with the host, whom they were probably entertaining with an account of our ship, which he had not yet visited, and of their intercourse with us. Mr. Hoffman, on taking leave in the morning, gave his host a knife, an important present, which the old man received very gratefully, as far exceeding his expectations. The valley as they proceeded became wilder, but more beautiful: it opened to greater width, the precipices around rose to a thousand feet in height, covered from their black summits down to the valley with green shrubs of a thousand hues, through which cascades glittering like silver in the sun, rushed gurgling and foaming to the river. At noon the travellers reached a hut inhabited by a friend of Maititi, named Tibu; the owner also of another hut some miles further up, where his wife lived with the pigs and dogs! This being the last station on the road to the Wahiria Lake, it was determined to spend the night here. Before they set forward in the morning, a large pig was tied up, to be prepared for killing on the expected return of Mr. Hoffman and his associates, whom the hospitable Tibu accompanied on the remainder of their journey.