I cannot say that a practical acquaintance with mission pay proves it to be of the very “fattening” character commonly supposed. All white missionaries, from the superintendent downwards, alike receive from the Society £180 per annum. For every child they are allowed £12, 12s. a-year till they are sixteen years of age, and an educational grant of £12, 12s. from eight till sixteen years. The Society pays the extra insurance premium charged for Fiji up to £500 (_i.e._, £5 out of £16). And the insurance must be paid, being the sole provision for a widow. Thirty shillings a-year is allowed for medical stores for the whole family; and for these the natives are continually asking, and are never refused. £3 extra is given in the event of a confinement. No yam-garden is allowed, but a free house is furnished, and about £12 is allowed to keep up a boat and crew for mission purposes. Goods are delivered in Levuka freight free, and brought thence by the mission schooner Jubilee. After ten years’ service a retiring pension of £40 a-year is allowed, rising to £60 after twenty years, when a gift of £50 is made to furnish a house. Forty years’ service entitles a man to a pension of £140 a-year. A missionary may receive _no_ offerings from the people for his own use. Marriage and baptism fees, which are respectively 4s. and 1s., are all handed over to the general fund for circuit expenses, such as providing canoes, &c. The yams, &c., given at school examinations are given to poor teachers, or to the lads at the training institution. It is compulsory on every missionary to pay £6, 6s. a-year to the Superannuated Preachers’ Fund, and £1, 1s. a-year to the Educational Fund. Servants must be clothed and fed, and constant gifts of cloth, medicine, &c., made to poor teachers and others. You may judge from these particulars that a missionary’s income is not on that excessively luxurious scale which you might suppose from reading the comments made by many travellers, who have been hospitably entertained at mission stations as much-honoured guests, for whom even the fatted calf has not been spared, and who (seeing the air of bright comfort and neatness prevailing around) have failed to give honour due to the careful and excellent housekeeping which could produce such admirable results with smaller means than are squandered in many a slatternly and slovenly household. Many even make this comfort the text for a discourse on the superiority of the Romish missions, on the self-denial and ascetic lives of the priests, quite forgetting that in teaching such races as these, one of the most important objects is to give them the example of a happy loving home, bright with all pleasant influences of civilised life.