In our walks we always had the unsolicited company of some government deputies. If you motioned them about anything, they were exceedingly addicted to salaaming, by bowing and raising their hands to their heads, but they remained exactly where they were. A rare and beautiful flower attracted your attention, and you wished to look closer at it, your attendant functionary pantomimically trusts that you will not enter, but passing through the gate, or scaling the coral wall, in a few minutes he will present you with one of the novel flowers. Should one of your company accidentally or intentionally slip out of the sight of these impromptu attendants, they appear most mentally troubled till he reappears. The policy pursued with these people was a mild but firm one. They were asked for a house on shore that might be used as a place for our sick to recruit. They declined; and a few days after one of our officers and some men occupied one of their buildings in the town of Tumai, divided from Napa by a small stream. This building had been used as a kind of town-hall, where the chiefs assembled in council, carried thither in sedan-chairs, encased in ratan lattices, and swung from a pole resting on the shoulders of two serfs. The honesty of the natives was shown in the security of clothes and everything else that might be left out; even a boat’s anchor lost, and found by them, was returned to this place, though they kept a spy upon its American inmates night and day. Here, while dining with the young officer in charge, I “tried on,” with some of the more intelligent natives, sentences in their language, from a vocabulary which had been prepared for him, and with which he had been able to negotiate for his daily supply of chow-chow, and eatables for some of the ships. “Cha tooti kwoo”—tea bring to me; and “Midzoo tooti kwoo”—water bring to me; and similar simple sentences they understood readily; but the attempt at more complicate ones, in which the vowel sound is dropped, rather awoke their risibles. The authorities sent off protests against the further occupancy of the house at Tumai, and requested that we would vacate it. They stated it was the place they had for assembling; it was the only place they had for meeting together to debate their local affairs, and it was also the place where their young were taught. They also took the opportunity of mentioning that the fertility of their island was not equal to the wants of its population; and that every draft upon them for live-stock, &c., was an oppression. In this there was obvious dissimulation; because they sent away to other countries a good deal of the produce of their land, and a great deal as tribute, while we paid well for whatever we got. The commodore had notified them of his intention of going up to their capital, Sheudi, distant some four miles from the anchorage, to pay his respects to the prince-regent at the palace; they did not covet the honor; they trusted he would not confer it.