After this, luxurious dinners became quite the rage at Guam. Two days subsequent to the governor's banquet, the officers found themselves at a dinner-party of fifty guests, where no less than forty-four separate dishes were served at each of the three courses of which the dinner consisted. Freycinet, from information he had received, relates that "this dinner cost the lives of two oxen and three fat pigs, to say nothing of poultry, game, and fish. Such a slaughter, I should think, has not been known since the marriage-feast of Gamache. No doubt our host considered that persons who had undergone so many privations during a protracted voyage ought to be compensated with an unusually profuse entertainment. The dessert showed no falling off either in abundance or in variety; it was succeeded by tea, coffee, creams, liqueurs of every description; and as the 'Refresco' had been served as usual an hour previous to dinner, it will be admitted without question that at Guam the most intrepid gourmand could find no other cause for disappointment but the limited capacity of the human stomach." However, the objects of the mission were not interfered with by all this dining and festivity. Natural history excursions, magnetical observations, the geographical survey of the island of Guam, entrusted to Duperrey, were all being pushed forward simultaneously. But in the meantime the corvette had got to moorings in the deep water off the port of St. Louis, while the chief of the Staff, as well as the sick, were housed at Agagna, the capital of the island and the seat of government. At that place, in honour of the French visitors, cock-fights took place, a kind of sport very popular in all the Spanish possessions in Oceania; dances also were given, the figures in which, it was said, contained allusions to events in the history of Mexico. The dancers, students of the Agagna college, were dressed in rich silks, imported a long time previously by the Jesuits from New Spain. Then came combats with sticks in which the Carolins took part; which again were succeeded, almost uninterruptedly by other amusements. But what Freycinet considered of most value was the mass of information concerning the customs and manners of the former inhabitants of the islands, which he obtained through Major D. Luis Torres; who, himself born in the country, had made a constant study of this subject. Of this interesting information use will be made when the subject is presently resumed, but first some notice must be taken of an excursion to the islands Rota and Tinian, the latter of which had already become known to us through the narratives of former travellers. [Illustration: A performer of the dances of Montezuma. (Fac-simile of early engraving.)]