Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/205

Rh cannibals of the South Pacific have always regarded people shipwrecked on their shores as special gifts or windfalls, just as the inhabitants of certain parts of the coast of the United States are said to have regarded the cargoes of wrecked ships less than a century ago. Of course he taught the natives many useful things, and eventually married the daughter of the chief, and became a chief himself when his father-in-law died.

Another man, who claimed to have visited half the islands of the Pacific, endeavored to prove his assertion by asking our friends to step inside for a few moments, where he removed his clothing and exhibited samples of the tattooing of pretty nearly every group. "That clouded pattern on my left leg," said he, "was done in the Kingsmill group, while those squares and fancy stripes on the right leg were put on in Samoa. My right arm and shoulder were done in the New Hebrides, while the left side was the work of the best artist of the Marquesas Islands. The fancy embroidery on my breast is of New Zealand, and that down my back was done in Tahiti."