We met a good many planters hereabouts,—all poor, many of them having sunk quite large fortunes on their plantations when Fijian cotton was selling at very high prices. Now they are sadly down-hearted; and many seem grievously disappointed that annexation, so far from working miracles of healing for shattered fortunes, appears for the present to have only added to their difficulties in many ways. But all were very kind to us, and seem cheered by even a glimpse of faces from the outer world. We called at Mr Chalmers’s very pretty estate, and he showed us all over his cocoa-nut fibre-works. He grows cotton and maize, but his principal crop is red and white arrowroot, which we saw in all stages of preparation. Then climbing a very steep path, we were welcomed by his pretty refined wife and daughters—bright handsome girls. They gave us tea with milk, though their goat only yields about a tumbler for the whole family, including several children. Certainly life on a Fijian plantation does not mean luxury, or rather it means such hardships as you, I am certain, cannot realise. Butcher-meat unattainable; poultry and eggs too precious for domestic use; fish-supply rare; fruit, as a rule, _nil_; even flour and groceries apt to run short. Daily fare consists of native vegetables, and perhaps a barrel of salt meat,—not an appetising diet, nor one to tempt a jaded palate, nor yet easily varied. Of course the importation of all sorts of preserved meats and fruits makes provisioning an easy matter for occasional travellers, but their constant use in a large family does not tend to economy. We heard abundant instances of the invariable ill-luck which seems to attend all efforts at improvement in this unfortunate country. At one house where we called, the owner, Mr Morey, had recently imported some valuable fowls. He discovered, when too late, that they were tainted with disease, which rapidly spread, and his own stock of two hundred fowls all died, besides turkeys, ducks, and guinea-fowl. We found his wife suffering torture from a form of ophthalmia which is very common in this country, known as _theeka_, from which, for the time, she was positively blind. Happily Mr Langham’s medical skill proved useful in relieving her agony. One gentleman whom we met was suffering severely from an illness called _waanganga_, which causes the muscles of the arm to contract in such a manner that for several days you cannot bend it.