Well, as you know, it is not yet six months since I returned home, after eighteen months of the most delightful wanderings in every corner of beautiful Ceylon. It needed all the warmth of family affection to make the bitter cold of an English winter even endurable, and my yearning for tropical heat and sunlight was for ever being reawakened by aggravating acquaintances, who invariably asked me, “Where are you going next?” As I had not the smallest prospect of ever again escaping from my native shores, I always answered, “To Fiji,” as being the most absurd answer that suggested itself to so foolish a question,—a place known to me only as being somehow associated with a schoolboy song about the King of the Cannibal Islands. Judge, then, of my amazement, when, one morning, I received a letter to tell me that Fiji had been annexed, and that Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon had been appointed first Governor, and gravely suggesting that I should accompany Lady Gordon to her remote home. I need scarcely tell you that the temptation proved irresistible. To begin with, a cruise in the South Pacific has been one of the dreams of my life; and the idea of going actually to live for an indefinite period on isles where there are still a number of ferocious cannibals, has a savour of romance which you can imagine does not lack charm. And then to do it all so comfortably, gliding into the adventure so easily, without the slightest exertion on my own part, is far too rare a chance to be lost, in spite of the remonstrances of my sisters, who consider it quite unnatural of me to care to leave home again so soon. Naturally, when I announced my intention of really going, every one replied, “Of course you are only joking!” And indeed, even now, I myself find it difficult to think of Fiji or anything connected with it in any other light than that of a great joke; its very name has always been considered funny! Its whereabouts, and everything connected with it, are evidently matters of the vaguest uncertainty to all my friends. I did my best to appear astonished at their ignorance, but, between ourselves, I honestly confess to having possessed the very haziest ideas on the subject, up to the moment when that letter reached me, when, of course, I got an atlas and hunted Fiji up. As you probably have no map at hand, and are certain to be equally in the dark, I may as well tell you that it is a group of about 250 islands, of which about 70 are inhabited. That it is in the South Pacific, about ten degrees south of the Equator, thirty degrees east of the north coast of Australia, and twenty degrees north of New Zealand. This is a very rough description, but it is sufficient to make you realise the position.