Our canoe voyage was nearly twenty miles in length, the last two or three up a narrow creek not above twenty or thirty feet in width. In one of the narrowest parts of the stream we were stopped by a tree which had fallen across the creek, just above the surface of the water. With some trouble and difficulty the canoes were each hoisted over the obstruction, the luggage being shifted from one to another. Some friends who came up about five months afterwards told me that the tree was still there. Probably it had caused a stoppage hundreds of times, yet no one dreamed of taking the little extra trouble necessary to remove it altogether from the passage. It was just the same in the forest: when a tree fell across the path, there it lay for months until it rotted away. Palanquins had to be hoisted over it, or with difficulty pushed beneath it, but it was never removed until nature helped in the work. It was no one’s business to cut it up, or to take it out of the way; there were no “turnpike trusts,” and the native government never gave themselves any concern about the matter. [Sidenote: COFFEE AND ORANGES] We were glad to land at Maròmby at ten o’clock, for rain came on, and before we were well housed it poured down heavily for some time. Here we got as dessert, after breakfast, a quantity of wild raspberries, which, while not equal in flavour to the English kind, are very sweet and refreshing. Close to the house where we stayed for our meal was a coffee plantation; the shrubs grow to a height of seven or eight feet, and have dark glossy leaves, with a handsome white flower. The small scarlet fruit, in which the seed—what we term the “berry”—is enclosed, contains a sweetish juice. The coffee plant thrives in most parts of the island, and its produce probably will become an important part of its exports. Near the house were also a number of orange-trees, and here I had the gratification of seeing an orange grove with the trees laden with thousands of the golden-hued fruit. We were allowed to take as many as we liked, and as the day was hot and sultry we were not slow to avail ourselves of the permission. Perhaps there are few more beautiful sights than an orange grove when the fruit is ripe on the trees. The “golden apples” of the Hesperides must surely have been the produce of an orange plantation.