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.
The birds are also remarkably tame.

If you happened to see one perched upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it did not fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until you could almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at your presence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from your path.