Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/85

Rh bay, while behind us the mountains rose very precipitously, and seemed to shut us out altogether from the rest of the island. The bay is nearly in the shape of a horseshoe, ending in two high headlands, and to follow its shores requires a walk or ride of about nine miles. The entrance is less than half a mile wide, and is guarded by two small islands, each about five hundred feet high.

"Cowper says:

"There is nowhere in the world a better illustration of the truth of this assertion than in the Marquesas. In each island the mountains rise in ridges like the sections of a starfish; some of these ridges are quite impassable, and all of them very difficult to traverse. The result has been that there was formerly very little intercourse between the tribes occupying the different valleys, and until the French came here there was hardly a time when two or more tribes were not at war. Even at present they are not entirely at peace, and though the most of them have abandoned cannibalism, it is occasionally practised.

"Our host told us that in many of the valleys there are old men