I cannot give you a better proof of the general poverty than the fact that scarcely any one in Levuka (the capital) owns a boat—the only other means of locomotion being to tramp on weary feet along the vilest of shingly footpaths. Even the officials—the Colonial Secretary and Auditor-General—have none. The Judge (Sir William Hackett) and the Attorney-General (Mr de Ricci) have a rickety old tub between them, which they either pull themselves, or man with two labour-boys, each great arm of the law supplying one! Of course the Governor has his own boat, in which Lady Gordon goes for a small row two or three times a-week; but it takes six of the native police to man it, and they are not always available. Moreover, it is such a good boat that there are very few places where it can ever be allowed to touch; and above all, it must keep a very respectful distance from the beautiful coral-reefs and patches, which are to me the chief delight of this place. I always envy the native women, who are for ever playing, and fishing, and finding wonderful treasures on the reef, but here the whites do not understand the interest of such pursuits. So my enjoyment of the reef consists in looking down on it from the hill above us, and lovely indeed it is. Just behind the house is a steep glen, with a rocky wee burn, overhung with good large trees, and these are matted with ferns and creepers. It is not a very fine piece of tropical scenery, but it is my own, in the sense that no one else ever takes the trouble to climb up. So there are few days that I do not scramble up to some pleasant perch among the grey boulders, whence I can look down through the fringe and frame of green leaves to the lovely blue sea, with the band of rainbow light that marks the coral-reef. I am writing there just now, in a cleft between two great rocks, and right glad to escape from the sound of many voices down at the house. For one of the aggravations of house-building out here (as in tropical countries generally) is, that to improve ventilation, the partitions between rooms always stop short of the ceiling. Consequently every word spoken in one is heard in all the others, to the great aggravation of the unwilling listener. How the gentlemen can concentrate their minds sufficiently to write business letters in their very noisy quarters, with people of all colours perpetually coming and going, is to me a standing mystery; and the annoyance is further aggravated by the fact that, in these one-storeyed houses, all rooms must of course be on the ground-floor, and all windows are shutterless glass doors, opening on to a public verandah; and you have to choose between sitting with several doors wide open to all comers, or stifling for lack of air by closing them. Certainly no one in Fiji can say that his house or his room is his castle, where he may rest undisturbed. I think, of all delights of a British house, there is none which we all shall henceforth