We found kind Mr Langham waiting at the pier to welcome us and offer us comfortable quarters, as a Fijian house is not good for sleep on such occasions. It seemed to me the dancing was going on more or less for thirty-six hours, counting from the moment of our arrival, when a most picturesque rehearsal was going on in the bright moonlight! Of course there had been innumerable previous ones; for the figures are most elaborate, the movements very varied and like a complicated ballet in which every dancer (perhaps two hundred at once) must move in faultless time. As we came up to Thakombau’s quarters a hundred and fifty ladies of Bau were beginning their dance, each carrying a paddle of polished wood, which they waved and turned with simultaneous action. The general effect was most stately. (I should have said ladies and their attendants, for nowhere is all etiquette of rank and birth so rigidly cared for. All rank comes through the mother.) The dancers were led by Andi Lytia and Andi Kuilla, the ex-queen and her daughter. Both are very tall and stout,—really fine stately women. No high-bred English duchess could carry herself more nobly than these born ladies leading their Tongan minuet. One of the sons has just married a Tongan princess, a very pretty woman. Hitherto I had only seen them in the undress of their homes, with a white waist-cloth, and sometimes a tiny pinafore only just covering the breast. Even then no one could fail to be struck with their true dignity. It is just the same with the men—the fine old chief and his handsome sons. It is quite impossible to look at these people now and realise the appalling scenes in which at least the older ones have so often joined. Now the ladies were in full dress, consisting of a waist-cloth of very rare black _tappa_, tiny jackets of white silk edged with lace, and no ornament whatever save a small English locket, and a small tuft of scarlet flowers in their halo of hair—that of the old queen is quite grey. They both looked really handsome.