Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/98

74 CHAPTER IV.

HEN well clear of the Marquesas the Pera turned her prow to the south-west, in the direction of Tahiti, which lay about nine hundred miles away. The strong trade-wind bore her swiftly on her course, and on the fourth day of the voyage the lofty peaks of Otaheite's isle rose into view. The summits of the mountains seemed to pierce the sky, so sharp and steep were they, and almost to their very tops they were covered with verdure. Luxuriant forests were everywhere visible, and the shore was fringed with a dense growth of palms that seemed to rise from the water itself.

The central peak of Tahiti has an elevation of something more than seven thousand feet, and from this peak there is a series of ridges radiating towards the sea like the spokes of a wheel. Many of these ridges are so steep on their sides that they cannot be ascended, and so narrow that there is not room for an ordinary path. A man standing on one of these ridges could with his right hand throw a stone into one valley, and with his left a stone into another, whose inhabitants could communicate only by descending to the coast, or to the lowland which borders it. The valleys are luxuriant, and even the ridges are covered with vines and bushes.