The _Tribune's_ course was now held among the clustering islands of the Pacific. They are mostly bountifully supplied with all the varied productions of the generous tropics. Scarcely a fruit or vegetable of those sunny regions but which in ample abundance is found among them. There various kinds of the bread-fruit tree flourish in the greatest perfection; so likewise the banana and plantain and milk-giving cocoa-nut grow in profusion; yams, pumpkins, cucumbers, guavas, pine apples, shaddocks, oranges, lemons, the tomato, arrow root, the much cultivated taro and sugar cane, with numberless other fruits, vegetables, and nutritious roots, afford an abundant supply of food for man. How warm and genial is the atmosphere! the cold of winter is altogether unknown; storms may blow, but they are necessary to purify the air; rains at times descend to fertilise the earth, but generally a bright blue sky is seen overhead, and the rays of the glorious sun sparkle on the blue waters of a placid sea. All nature is beautiful and excellent, but savage man is the dark and loathsome spot which defiles it; not as he was when first he walked in Paradise, but as sin and all his evil passions have made him. Jack and his shipmates heard the character of these islanders, and though not much given to shuddering, shuddered as they heard the tale. Nowhere on the face of the globe did more bloodthirsty cannibals exist, especially among the chiefs. To satisfy their horrible and unnatural craving for human flesh, they murdered every one who was shipwrecked on their coast. Even if a canoe was cast on shore with their own people they claimed the crew as their victims; they went to war for this sole object; they lay in wait and carried off helpless women and children, even their slaves they often killed to feed upon. When a war canoe was finished they dragged her over the writhing bodies of their captives, and when first she put to sea they murdered others on her deck. When a chief's house or a temple was built, men were compelled to descend and hold the upright posts, when the earth was shovelled in upon their heads. When a chief died, all his wives were strangled or burnt; mothers destroyed their infants--children compelled their aged parents to descend living into a tomb when weary of supporting them--and young men, when disappointed of some object, would desire to be buried; and their own parents would assist seemingly with pleasure at the horrible ceremony. Their only religion seemed to be an unwilling worship of evil spirits; not from love or reverence, but to avert the mischief they might otherwise work upon them.