Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/274

242 This bare historical outline was literally all I knew about the Marquesas Isles, and I doubt whether you or any one else in England knows much more.

Now that through my ignorance I have thrown away such a chance of visiting them, and also the Paumotus, I am told on all sides that they are the loveliest group in the Pacific, ideal in their beauty—embodied poems; and so I am fuming over my own folly, and telling myself that a traveller who could let slip such a golden opportunity must have reached second childhood, and is no longer fit to wander at large. I try to be philosophical, and not fret over the irrevocable; but of all the scattered leaves that I have yet suffered to float past me on that "stream that never returneth," none has aggravated me so sorely as this. I am assured on all hands that I should have received a genial welcome from the French governor and Madame and their little society, and that the expedition would have been in every respect exceptionally delightful.

As it is, I can only gather a few faint visions of the lovely isles by stringing together such particulars as I can learn respecting them. To begin with, "Les isles Marquises" comprise twelve volcanic isles, thrown, up in wildly irregular black crags, the central range of the larger isles towering to a height of 5000 feet, while in many places inaccessible crags rise perpendicular from the sea, but are so exquisitely draped with parasitic plants as to