Before we had finished breakfast, we had a New Year’s morning visit from the old king’s daughter, Andi Arietta Kuilla, accompanied by her beautiful youngest boy, little Timothy. She has two other children, Ratu Beny (Benjamin) and a little girl rejoicing in the name of Jane Emilia. We walked back with her to her father’s house, at the foot of this hill, and found her mother, Andi Lytia, the old queen, suffering from a very severe cough. She was lying on her mats beside a central fireplace (_i.e._, a square hollow in the floor). She wore only a long waist-cloth, a style of dress which displayed her ample proportions to the utmost, and being so huge, she did strike one as being rather undraped! But no one thinks anything about it, so I suppose it is only prejudice. Happily both these immense ladies are strikingly handsome, with massive features and clever heads, which have been proved to contain good brains. Their home, like those of their neighbours, is simply a large room strewn with mats, on which the family and their guests recline. The king’s own house stands apart, but he reserves a corner here, which is shut off by a heavy curtain of native cloth; and one uncomfortable-looking chair revealed his wish to conform to foreign customs. He thought it necessary to sit on this when I first entered the house, but soon sacrificed dignity to comfort, and reclined on his mat, while his family squatted round him. A large number of lamps attracted my attention, as did also two neck-pillows, each formed of a joint of the largest bamboo I have ever seen, measuring 5½ inches in diameter. It had drifted ashore from some unknown isle, and been brought to the Vuni Valu as a rare prize. It is certainly a curiosity, but not quite one’s idea of a comfortable pillow for a weary head. A Fijian pillow, however, is merely a neck-rest; the head still supports itself as it was taught to do in those days of the elaborate hair-dressing, on which the chiefs prided themselves so greatly that each considered it necessary to have his especial barber, whose joy and delight it was to adorn the head of his master with curls and twists and plaits, more numerous and more wonderful than those of any other chief. It was strangely suggestive of a stormy past to hear the old king, who was eager for particulars of our expedition up the Rewa, constantly asking Mr Langham to explain exactly where the different towns were of which we spoke. Then I found that neither he nor his daughter (whose own district is actually on the Rewa) had ever even heard of these towns; while as to seeing them, no tribe _ever_ saw anything beyond their own property unless they went as invaders in time of war. I showed Andi Kuilla sketches of places within a day’s march of her own property, but she had never seen any of them.