They had a profusion of cock's feathers bound circularly round their brows, broad gorgets of wood ornamented with red berries round their necks, shell bracelets and ornaments of polished shell or bone tied above their ancles. Each held in his hand a fan of palmetto. After standing a few moments, keeping their eyes fixed upon me, they began jumping up and down and fanning themselves, applying both hands to the fan. My first feeling was surprise, mingled with curiosity, to know the cause of their strange appearance; but when they had several times repeated their exercise, the scene was altogether so ridiculous that I could not refrain from laughing. They soon afterwards, without even noticing the chief, turned and walked off. After leaving the hut of the chief, I visited a number of others, all of which were nearly alike. In one of them I saw two drums, the only instruments of music that I met with. The largest of them was a hollow log, from three to four feet long, and about a foot and a half in diameter, covered at both ends with shark skin. I asked the owner to play upon it, to which he readily consented, seeming highly flattered with the invitation. He accompanied his voice by thumping his hands and elbows on the drum-head; but the music that he made was intolerable. He beat, however, in very good time, and had evidently a high opinion of his performance. In the course of our ramble, one of the officers told an Indian, who had joined us, by signs, that he wanted some cocoa-nuts. The good-natured fellow acquiesced without the least hesitation, and to our great astonishment, ran up a tree standing near us, with the activity of a squirrel. The tree was forty or fifty feet high, having but a slight inclination, yet the climbing seemed to occasion him scarcely any exertion. They do not press their bodies against the tree and hitch themselves up as is customary with us, which, in their naked condition, they could not do without injury. They press the bottoms of their feet against the tree, and clinging to it with their hands one above the other, ascend upon all-fours. It did not strike us with less surprise when he had thrown the cocoa-nuts down, to see with what facility he stripped off the hard husks without the aid of any thing but his teeth. For such a thing to have been accomplished by one of us would be found impossible. We afterwards remarked the same practise in other places, and at other islands. It was general except with the old men, who, unless they were very robust, used a sharp-pointed stick of hard wood to remove the husk. They could not understand our practice of shaking hands. When we extended a hand to one of them as a mark of friendly salutation, they looked as though they would question what was meant by it; and from their manner seemed to think that our object was to feel their skin, which they would always reciprocate by raising up our sleeves and examining very minutely.