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- 9066
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- CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE VALLEY--GOLDEN LIZARDS--TAMENESS OF THE
BIRDS--MOSQUITOES--FLIES--DOGS--A SOLITARY CAT--THE CLIMATE--THE
COCOANUT TREE--SINGULAR MODES OF CLIMBING IT--AN AGILE YOUNG
CHIEF--FEARLESSNESS OF THE CHILDREN--TOO-TOO AND THE COCOANUT TREE--THE
BIRDS OF THE VALLEY
I think I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural history
of the valley.
Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogs
that I saw in Typee? Dogs!--Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth,
shining speckled hides--fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whence
could they have come? That they were not the indigenous production of
the region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their
being interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide
themselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel at
home in the vale--that they wished themselves well out of it, and back
to the ugly country from which they must have come.
Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothing
better than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on one
occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Mehevi; but
the benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very patiently;
but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me in confidence that
they were ‘taboo’.
As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayor
Whittington, I shall never forget the day that I was lying in the house
about noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and happening to raise
my eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat, which sat erect in the
doorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like one
of those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers’ saints! I am one
of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at
any time an insufferable annoyance.
Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected
apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I had
a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up; the
cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in pursuit;
but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in the
valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible that
it might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vain
to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of them
had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me to
this day.
Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none
which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued
species of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail,
and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures were
to be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, and
multitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as they
ran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and
down the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beauty
of these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims
upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear.
Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady place
during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them.
If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when I
tried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn for
protection to the very hand that attacked it.
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