Many water snakes were seen here, swimming about on the surface; and one of two chasing each other and playing about the ship was shot by Captain Stanley from his cabin window, and brought on board.  It appeared to be of the genus Hypotrophis, and measured 37 1/2 inches in length; it had a pair of minute poison fangs on each side of the upper jaw; the colour was a dirty greenish with numerous pale narrow bands.

THE CALVADOS GROUP.

July 16th.

The pinnace having returned yesterday and reported a clear passage for the ship to the westward close inshore, we got underweigh and returned on the same line by which we had come out, anchoring for the night in 19 fathoms water, under Observation Reef 2.  Next day we rounded Brierly Island from the eastward, passed between it and Joannet Island, and after running a few miles further to the westward, anchored in 30 fathoms—­15 miles West-North-West from Brierly Island, and two miles from the nearest of the Calvados Group.  In passing Brierly Island the place appeared to be deserted.  We saw a single canoe hauled up on the beach, but no natives.

On July 18th, after standing to the westward 32 miles, we hauled out south, and anchored in 22 fathoms, about eight miles from the nearest of the Calvados.  We remained at this anchorage for the next three days.

INHABITANTS OF THE CALVADOS GROUP.

One day we were visited by a canoe from a neighbouring island, and on the following morning two more canoes came off.  The people in one canoe kept at a safe distance, but those in the other came alongside, and after exhausting their stock of yams and other articles of barter, went off to their more cautious companions, and speedily returned to us with a fresh supply.  The canoe was an old patched-up affair, and while one of the natives was standing up with a foot on each gunwale, a previous fracture in the bow, united only by pitch, gave way, and a piece of the side, four feet long, came out, allowing the water to rush in.  The canoe would speedily have been swamped, had not the author of the mischief held on the piece in his hand, while some of the others bailed away as rapidly as possible, and the remainder paddled off with desperation, shouting loudly to the people in the second canoe for help.  But their friends seemed as much frightened as themselves, not knowing the nature of the accident, and probably supposing that we had been roughly treating their companions they made sail for the shore, and did not stop until they had got half a mile away from the ship, when they waited until the damaged canoe came up in a sinking state, bailed her out, and after taking some people out of her, both made off, under sail, and we saw no more of them.

But for this accident I would probably have got a few words of their language to compare with those obtained at Brierly Island.  Our visitors were profusely decorated with the red, feathery, leafy shoots of an Amaranthus, which they wore fastened in bunches about the ankles, waist, elbows, and in the hair.  In other respects, I saw nothing among them different from what has already been described at Coral Haven.