The natives were a pleasant, friendly, good-looking lot.  In fact, so like was their cast of countenance to that of the white-skinned people we were accustomed to see that we had great difficulty in realizing that they were mere savages, costume—­or lack of it—­to the contrary notwithstanding.  Under a huge mango tree two were engaged in dividing a sheep.  Sixty or seventy others stood solemnly around watching.  It may have been a religious ceremony, for all I know; but the affair looked to be about two parts business to sixty of idle and cheerful curiosity.  We stopped and talked to them a little, chaffed the pretty girls—­they were really pretty—­and marched on.

About noon our elegant guide stopped, struck an attitude, and pointed with his silver-headed rattan cane.

“This,” said he, “is where we must camp.”

We marched through a little village.  A family party sat beneath the veranda of a fine building—­a very old wrinkled couple; two stalwart beautiful youths; a young mother suckling her baby; two young girls; and eight or ten miscellaneous and naked youngsters.  As the rest of the village appeared to be empty, I imagined this to be the caretaker’s family, and the youngsters to belong to others.  We stopped and spoke, were answered cheerfully, suggested that we might like to buy chickens, and offered a price.  Instantly with a whoop of joy the lot of them were afoot.  The fowl waited for no further intimations of troublous times, but fled squawking.  They had been there before.  So had our hosts; for inside a minute they had returned, each with a chicken—­and a broad grin.

After due payment we proceeded on a few hundred yards, and pitched camp beneath two huge mango trees.

Besides furnishing one of the most delicious of the tropical fruits, the mango is also one of the most beautiful of trees.  It is tall, spreads very wide, and its branches sweep to within ten feet of the ground.  Its perfect symmetry combined with the size and deep green of its leaves causes it to resemble, from a short distance, a beautiful green hill.  Beneath its umbrella one finds dense shade, unmottled by a single ray of sunlight, so that one can lie under it in full confidence.  For, parenthetically, even a single ray of this tropical sunlight is to the unprotected a very dangerous thing.  But the leaves of the mango have this peculiarity, which distinguishes it from all other trees—­namely, that they grow only at the very ends of the small twigs and branches.  As these, of course, grow only at the ends of the big limbs, it follows that from beneath the mango looks like a lofty green dome, a veritable pantheon of the forest.

We made our camp under one of these trees; gave ourselves all the space we could use; and had plenty left over—­five tents and a cook camp, with no crowding.  It was one of the pleasantest camps I ever saw.  Our green dome overhead protected us absolutely from the sun; high sweet grass grew all about us; the breeze wandered lazily up from the distant Indian Ocean.  Directly before our tent door the slope fell gently away through a sparse cocoanut grove whose straight stems panelled our view, then rose again to the clear-cut outline of a straight ridge opposite.  The crest of this was sentinelled by tall scattered cocoanut trees, the “bursting star” pyrotechnic effect of their tops being particularly fine against the sky.