[Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas by Herman Melville]@TWC D-Link book
Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas

CHAPTER LXXXI
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Superb writing-desks of rosewood, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl; decanters and goblets of cut glass; embossed volumes of plates; gilded candelabra; sets of globes and mathematical instruments; the finest porcelain; richly-mounted sabres and fowling-pieces; laced hats and sumptuous garments of all sorts, with numerous other matters of European manufacture, were strewn about among greasy calabashes half-filled with "poee," rolls of old tappa and matting, paddles and fish-spears, and the ordinary furniture of a Tahitian dwelling.
All the articles first mentioned were, doubtless, presents from foreign powers.

They were more or less injured: the fowling-pieces and swords were rusted; the finest woods were scratched; and a folio volume of Hogarth lay open, with a cocoa-nut shell of some musty preparation capsized among the miscellaneous furniture of the Rake's apartment, where that inconsiderate young gentleman is being measured for a coat.
While we were amusing ourselves in this museum of curiosities, our conductor plucked us by the sleeve, and whispered, "Pomaree! Pomaree! armai kow kow." "She is coming to sup, then," said the doctor, staring in the direction indicated.

"What say you, Paul, suppose we step up ?" Just then a curtain near by lifted, and from a private building a few yards distant the queen entered, unattended.
She wore a loose gown of blue silk, with two rich shawls, one red and the other yellow, tied about her neck.

Her royal majesty was barefooted.
She was about the ordinary size, rather matronly; her features not very handsome; her mouth, voluptuous; but there was a care-worn expression in her face, probably attributable to her late misfortunes.

From her appearance, one would judge her about forty; but she is not so old.
As the queen approached one of the recesses, her attendants hurried up, escorted her in, and smoothed the mats on which she at last reclined.


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