told me that he was
very tired, and I was very sorry for him, for he was so thinly and
poorly dressed, and the natives are not strong enough to bear
exposure to cold as we can, and a temperature at 68 degrees is cold
to them. But he was quite incorrigible, and thrashed his horse to
the last.
We breakfasted on fowl, poi, and cocoanut milk, in presence of even
a larger number of spectators than the night before, one of them a
very old man looking savagely picturesque, with a red blanket tied
round his waist, leaving his lean chest and arms, which were
elaborately tattooed, completely exposed.
The mule had been slightly chafed by the gear, and in my anxiety
about a borrowed animal, of which Mr. Austin makes a great joke, I
put my saddle-bags on my own mare, in an evil hour, and not only
these, but some fine cocoanuts, tied up in a waterproof which had
long ago proved its worthlessness. It was a grotesquely miserable
picture. The house is not far from the beach, and the surf, beyond
which a heavy mist hung, was coming in with such a tremendous sound
that we had to shout at the top of our voices in order to be heard.
The sides of the great gulch rose like prison walls, cascades which
had no existence the previous night hurled themselves from the
summit of the cliffs directly into the sea, the rain, which fell in
sheets, not drops, covered the ground to the depth of two or three
inches, and dripped from the wretched, shivering horses, which stood
huddled together with their tails between their legs.
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