Omoo

It was just in the middle of the merry, mellow afternoon that they ushered us to dinner, underneath a green shelter of palm boughs; open all round, and so low at the eaves that we stooped to enter.

Within, the ground was strewn over with aromatic ferns-called "nahee"-freshly gathered; which, stirred underfoot, diffused the sweetest odour. On one side was a row of yellow mats, inwrought with fibres of bark stained a bright red. Here, seated after the fashion of the Turk, we looked out, over a verdant bank, upon the mild, blue, endless Pacific. So far round had we skirted the island that the view of Tahiti was now intercepted.