Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/172

 forward marching, to the music of fife and drum, and the commands to shoulder, carry, present, and ground  arms, highly delighted them. After remaining on board several hours they were given presents of whale’s teeth,  axes, accordions, boxes of Windsor soap, plane-irons,  jews’-harps, red paint, and large, bright, brass buttons. They then departed for the shore, greatly pleased with their visit and presents.

The next day, as usual on our arrival at any prominent place, we erected our observatory. We chose a hill about a quarter of a mile from the beach. The observatory consisted of several portable houses, built in New York. The pendulum house was about twenty feet square, and eighteen feet in height. The transit and telescope buildings were somewhat smaller. These, with six tents, made quite a village, and greatly astonished  the natives.

May 9. Two small trading sloops arrived to-day, the Who'd Have Thought It and the Nonesuch. They were tenders to the ship Leonidas, Captain Eggleston,  which was at another island. The Leonidas was a South Sea trader, for tortoise-shell and beche de mer. Among the runaway English convicts here was a short, red-headed, wrinkled old Irishman, by the name of Paddy  Connell. He had a long gray beard, which hung down to his waist. He had lived on these islands forty years, and in dress and looks strongly resembled these Fiji  cannibals. He said it seemed to him sometimes as though he was living out of the world; but that he  was very happy, for he had five wives and forty-eight  children.