“A peculiar natural phenomenon rendered the scene still more striking and impressive as the interval between the two parties, the savage and the civilized, was gradually diminished by the onward motion of the boats. The spray as it rose in clouds from the breakers dashing on the shore, reflecting the rays of the declining sun, magnified considerably the slight figures of the natives, making massive and formidable giants of men who were in reality little more than sable dwarfs. As the cutters neared that part of the shore where they had stationed themselves, and they clearly perceived that we were making preparations to land, their excitement was such that they appeared as if they had suddenly become frantic. “They seemed to lose that restraint and control which it is the pride of the savage to exhibit in time of danger, and jumped and yelled like so many demons let loose from the bottomless pit, or as if there had been a Bedlam in that locality, and they the most unmanageable of its frantic inmates. Their manner was that of men determined and formidable in the midst of all their excitement. They brandished their bows in our direction; they menaced us with their arrows, said by common report--so often a liar--to be poisoned; exhibiting by every possible contortion of savage pantomime their hostile determination. To use a common vulgar expression of some of the seamen, they seemed to have made up their minds to ‘chaw us all up.’... “The spear which he flourished incessantly was terminated by a bright, flat, pointed head, which gleamed with flashes of light, as, circling rapidly in the air, it reflected the rays of the sun. Sometimes he would hold it aloft, poising it in his uplifted hand, as if with the intention of hurling it with unerring and deadly aim at the first who dared to approach the shore of his native island. At length, in a paroxysm of well-acted fury, he dashed boldly into the water, boiling and seething round him as it broke in great billows on the beach, and on the rocks by which it was defended, and, fixing an arrow in his bow, he shot it off in the direction of the steamer, as if that were the arch enemy that had provoked his bellicose fury.” The second party of natives, who turned out to be females, were as frightened as their male friends were angry. After several failures in launching a canoe, they rushed in a body to the jungle and hid themselves from the strangers. They exhibited the usual characteristics of the people, a basket for fish doing duty for clothes, and a patch of red ochre on their heads taking the place of hair. So repulsive were they in their appearance, that the sailors declined to leave mirrors on the shore as presents for them, saying that such hideous creatures ought not to be allowed to look at their own features.