 up of
the little trifling incidents of the passing hour; but these diminutive items
swelled altogether to an amount of happiness seldom experienced by more
enlightened individuals, whose pleasures are drawn from more elevated but rarer
sources.
    What community, for instance, of refined and intellectual mortals would
derive the least satisfaction from shooting pop-guns? The mere supposition of
such a thing being possible would excite their indignation, and yet the whole
population of Typee did little else for ten days but occupy themselves with that
childish amusement, fairly screaming, too, with the delight it afforded them.
    One day I was frolicking with a little spirited urchin, some six years old,
who chased me with a piece of bamboo about three feet long, with which he
occasionally belaboured me. Seizing the stick from him, the idea happened to
suggest itself, that I might make for the youngster, out of the slender tube,
one of those nursery muskets with which I had sometimes seen children playing.
Accordingly, with my knife, I made two parallel slits in the cane several inches
in length, and cutting loose at one end the elastic strip between them, bent it
back and slipped the point into a little notch made for the purpose. Any small
substance placed against this would be projected with considerable force through
the tube, by merely springing the bent strip out of the notch.
    Had I possessed the remotest idea of the sensation this piece of ordnance
was destined to produce, I should certainly have taken out a patent for the
invention. The boy scampered away with it, half delirious with ecstasy, and in
twenty minutes afterward I might have been seen surrounded by a noisy crowd -
venerable old graybeards, responsible fathers of families, valiant warriors,
matrons, young men, girls and children - all holding in their hands bits of
bamboo, and each clamouring to be served first.
    For three or four hours I was engaged in manufacturing pop-guns, but at last
made over my goodwill and interest in the concern to a lad of remarkably quick
parts, whom I soon initiated into the art and mystery.
    Pop, pop, pop, pop! now resounded all over the valley. Duels, skirmishes,
pitched battles, and general engagements were to be seen on every side. Here, as
you walked along a path which led through a thicket, you fell into a
cunningly-laid ambush, and became a target for a body of musketeers, whose
tattooed limbs you could just see peeping into view through the foliage. There,
you were assailed by the intrepid garrison of a house, who levelled their bamboo
rifles at you
