* * * * * THE TEACHER’S HOUSE AT LAMITI, ISLE NGAU, OR ANGAU, _April 27_. I am writing this letter in fragments,—just a few lines at a time—while waiting for our starts; and as we depend wholly on the tide, these are sometimes most inconvenient. Thus at the present moment, 8 P.M., we would fain be rigging up our mosquito-curtains in the large clean house which has been our home for the day. But, alas! Mr Langham has accumulated such a pile of work—church service, teachers’ meeting, school examinations, marriages, and baptisms,—to get through to-morrow at the next large town, that, to my unspeakable disgust, he cannot venture on waiting for the morning tide, so we have to do about fourteen miles’ poling in a canoe to-night, in total darkness, along a coast which by daylight is quite lovely. Besides, we are pretty well tired to begin with, having been up long before sunrise, and finished breakfast by 7 A.M., to catch this morning’s tide; and having got here before 9 A.M. have ever since been hanging about, looking at the village, the shore, schools, and quaint scholars (from tiny toddles to grown-up men and women), all more or less picturesquely dressed up, some with gauze-like _tappa_ worn over Turkey-red, with tufts of crimson or blue dyed fibre in the hair. While the Langhams were at a long church service, I stole off for a bathe, but to-day was eminently unsuccessful in my quest, from foolishly taking the advice of some Fijian women, whose ideas of bliss in this respect are not ours, publicity being no drawback. You really can hardly realise what an enchanting feature in our travels is our daily bath. No humdrum tub, filled by a commonplace housemaid, but a quiet pool on some exquisite stream, sometimes a clear babbling brook, just deep enough to lie down full length, beneath an overarching bower of great tree-ferns and young palm-fronds, all tangled with trailing creepers, and just leaving openings through which you see peeps of the bluest of skies, and tall palms far overhead. And sometimes the stream widens into a broad deep pool without a ripple, lying in the cool shade of a group of _eevie_ trees, which are the commonest foliage here, like grand old walnut-trees. Conceive the delight of coming on such a stream after a couple of days on board ship, or after escaping from a dark Fijian house crammed with people, who, having presented various trays of steaming food, vegetables, fish, &c. (yesterday we had four pigs roasted whole, and two turtle, the latter invariably nasty), deem themselves rewarded by sitting down deliberately to enjoy a long fixed stare at the white pigs eating! Imagine, I say, escaping from this stew—and getting hotter still by a scramble in the grilling sun—and then following up the stream till you find a pool perfect in all respects, especially one with a waterfall just big enough to sit under, and therein plunging and rejoicing as you only