WE RECEIVE CALLS AT THE HOTEL DE CALABOOZA OUR place of confinement being open all round, and so near the Broom Road, of course we were in plain sight of everybody passing; and, therefore, we had no lack of visitors among such an idle, inquisitive set as the Tahitians.

For a few days, they were coming and going continually; while, thus ignobly fast by the foot, we were fain to give passive audience.
During this period, we were the lions of the neighbourhood; and, no doubt, strangers from the distant villages were taken to see the "Karhowrees" (white men), in the same way that countrymen, in a city, are gallanted to the Zoological Gardens.
All this gave us a fine opportunity of making observations.

I was painfully struck by the considerable number of sickly or deformed persons; undoubtedly made so by a virulent complaint, which, under native treatment, almost invariably affects, in the end, the muscles and bones of the body.

In particular, there is a distortion of the back, most unsightly to behold, originating in a horrible form of the malady.
Although this, and other bodily afflictions, were unknown before the discovery of the islands by the whites, there are several cases found of the Pa-Fa, or Elephantiasis--a native disease, which seems to have prevailed among them from the earliest antiquity.

Affecting the legs and feet alone, it swells them, in some instances, to the girth of a man's body, covering the skin with scales.