Churches here are just like the houses on a very large scale. They are on a raised foundation of stones for drainage, and are all built of trees and reeds, with high roof, thatched, and walls thickly coated outside with dry leaves. Of course they burn very readily. The pillars and rafters are often decorated with beautiful patterns in sinnet-work—that is, coloured string made of cocoa-nut fibre woven into elaborate patterns. On New Year’s Eve the churches are beautifully decorated with green leaves; and exquisitely made wreaths and necklaces of berries, alternating with bunches of tiny leaves and flowers, hang all about the lamps. They are very pretty, but of oppressive scent. At the midnight service two of the native teachers gave short addresses, and as the clock struck twelve there was a short interval for silent prayer. Then the Vuni Valu, the fine old ex-king, prayed, as a beginning of the New Year. They tell me his prayers are generally very striking and very touching. After service we all stood for a while in the bright starlight, exchanging New Year greetings, while the children indulged in noisily beating the _lalis_, the big wooden drums, and (alas for British importations!) rattling old tin cases! and so making night hideous. This New Year festival is an anniversary of purely English origin, the native method of marking seasons being simply by the yam crops. Thakombau is a very fine old man, stately and chief-like in his bearing, and with clear, penetrating eyes. It certainly was strange to hear the first words of prayer uttered in the New Year flowing from _his_ lips, concerning whose youth and manhood we had heard such appalling tales—tales, moreover, which we knew to be undoubtedly true, beginning with that early feat of his childhood, when at the tender age of six, the young Seru, as he was then called, clubbed his first victim, a boy somewhat his senior. The first fifty years of his life were passed in wars and fightings, and disgraced by unspeakable barbarities, including the strangling of his father’s five wives, after the death of that old miscreant. But while still a determined heathen, he was not altogether unfriendly to the missionaries, whose remonstrances he would often endure, while rejecting their counsels. Their teaching was strongly supported by his wife, Andi Lytia, and his daughter Andi Arietta Kuilla (Lady Harriet Flag). The latter is a woman of masculine intellect, who rules her own district splendidly, and is the king’s best adviser. Like many another, however, Thakombau turned a deaf ear to all their arguments so long as his way was prosperous. It was not till 1854, when one tribe after another had thrown off his yoke, and his fame as a warrior was dimmed, that he began to lose faith in his own gods, and to listen with a more favourable ear to the counsels of the Christian King George of Tonga, who sent him a letter urging him also to become a worshipper of the Saviour.