[9] 'Fuatawah' or 'Faataua,' to make friends.

Soon after breakfast, Mrs. Brander dressed me in one of her own native costumes, and we drove to the outskirts of a dense forest, through which a footpath leads to the waterfall and fort of Faataua. Here we found horses waiting for us, on which we rode, accompanied by the gentlemen on foot, through a thick growth of palms, orange-trees, guavas, and other tropical trees, some of which were overhung and almost choked by luxuriant creepers. Specially noticeable among the latter was a gorgeous purple passion-flower, with orange-coloured fruit as big as pumpkins, that covered everything with its vigorous growth. The path was always narrow and sometimes steep, and we had frequently almost to creep under the overhanging boughs, or to turn aside to avoid a more than usually dense mass of creepers. We crossed several small rivers, and at last reached a spot that commanded a view of the waterfall, on the other side of a deep ravine. Just below the fort that crowns the height, a river issues from a narrow cleft in the rock, and falls at a single bound from the edge of an almost perpendicular cliff, 600 feet high, into the valley beneath. First one sees the rush of blue water, gradually changing in its descent to a cloud of white spray, which in its turn is lost in a rainbow of mist. Imagine that from beneath the shade of feathery palms and broad-leaved bananas through a network of ferns and creepers you are looking upon the Staubbach, in Switzerland, magnified in height, and with a background of verdure-clad mountains, and you will have some idea of the fall of Faataua as we beheld it.

Waterfall at Faataua
[View full size illustration.]

After resting a little while and taking some sketches, we climbed up to the fort itself, a place of considerable interest, where the natives held out to the very last against the French. On the bank opposite the fort, the last islander killed during the struggle for independence was shot while trying to escape. Situated in the centre of a group of mountains, with valleys branching off in all directions, the fort could hold communication with every part of the coast, and there can be little doubt that it would have held out much longer than it did, but for the treachery of one of the garrison, who led the invaders, under cover of the night, and by devious paths, to the top of a hill commanding the position. Now the ramparts and earthworks are overrun and almost hidden by roses. Originally planted, I suppose, by the new-comers, they have spread rapidly in all directions, till the hill-sides and summits are quite a-blush with the fragrant bloom.

Having enjoyed some strawberries and some icy cold water from a spring, and heard a long account of the war from the gardiens, we found it was time to commence our return journey, as it was now getting late. We descended much more quickly than we had come up, but daylight had faded into the brief tropical twilight, and that again into the shades of night, ere we reached the carriage.

Dinner and evening service brought the day to a conclusion, and I retired, not unwillingly, to bed, to dream of the charms of Tahiti.

Sometimes I think that all I have seen must be only a long vision, and that too soon I shall awaken to the cold reality; the flowers, the fruit, the colours worn by every one, the whole scene and its surroundings, seem almost too fairylike to have an actual existence. I am in despair when I attempt to describe all these things. I feel that I cannot do anything like justice to their merits, and yet I fear all the time that what I say may be looked upon as an exaggeration.

Long dreamy lawns, and birds on happy wings,
Keeping their homes in never-rifled bowers;
Cool fountains filling with their murmurings
The sunny silence 'twixt the chiming hours.