DEAR AUNT EMMA,—I have not yet written once direct to you, but I trust you nevertheless consider yourself bound to write to me; for you cannot realise how greatly we prize all home letters out here, and how we do watch for the mails. We have been so watching now for upwards of a week, the mail being long overdue, and a hundred times a-day we look up to see if no faint line of smoke on the horizon tells of its approach; and when it does come in with a whole month’s European news, can you not fancy what an anxious minute the opening of the mail-bag is? If only people at home could realise the delight their letters are to wanderers in far lands, I think they would surely write more regularly. I wish I could look in at you all, just for a good chat, but I should wish to carry with me a flood of sunshine, and this calm blessed sea, for I fear London is hardly as pretty to-day as Fiji; and whatever disadvantages this place possesses, it certainly has no lack of beauty. At present, however, it is terribly isolated—a small steamer to New Zealand being our only direct communication with the outer world, the Australian boats having deliberately dropped us, declaring that we don’t pay! However, for the last three months the great steamers running between San Francisco, New Zealand, and Australia have touched at Khandavu, our outermost isle, bringing and taking mails and passengers; but they are fighting hard to get off doing so, and only do it at all because their agent signed a contract which they find they cannot at present legally break. _March 7._—I began this letter a week ago, when we were waiting and watching for the mail. At last, when we were beginning to fear our little steamer had gone to the bottom, she returned with a few Australian letters, but the aggravating steamer from San Francisco never touched Khandavu at all; so all our English letters and papers have gone to New Zealand, and we shall not see them for six weeks. So much for being a poor colony, which cannot afford to build proper lighthouses. And poor it is with a vengeance. You cannot imagine anything more so. The whole white community are only just above starvation-point, and yet everything is very expensive.