Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/249

Rh him a Tahitian name, by which alone he was known to the natives. One day, after the boy had been much with the queen, a suspicious-looking spot broke out on his cheek, and the native attendants begged Mrs Green to go at once to the queen and ask her to take the child into bed with her, and cover him up, which would avert all danger.

This afternoon, for the first time since I landed, I have seen a centipede—not one, but many, which were lying quietly hidden beneath a mass of decaying fronds of the cocoa-palm. We put one in a bottle; but though a large specimen for the Pacific, it is barely six inches in length. These isles of the blest enjoy a perfect immunity from all venomous creatures, with this one exception; and it is a very innocent creature compared with the centipedes of other lands, especially of Africa and South America. Unfortunately the latter have lately been carried by foreign ships to some of the Leeward Isles, and in the same manner scorpions have been brought to Tahiti—a very unfortunate introduction. The centipedes, small as they are, can give an agonising bite, which, however, is not actually dangerous to human beings. They are chiefly fatal to poultry, especially turkeys, which swallow them in mistake for worms, and invariably die soon afterwards.