The night proved stormy, and we rejoiced greatly that we were spending it on dry land. The island is about thirty miles in circumference, and is chiefly a great cocoa-nut plantation. The nuts are brought from all parts of the island to the machinery houses on the beach, below Mr Hill’s house, where they are broken up, and the kernel dried, either in the sun or by steam in the drying-house, by which process it becomes _coppra_; and being then packed in bags, is ready for export, to be converted into oil by great crushing-machines. The outer husk is then passed into machines known as “devils,” by which it is torn up, and the fibre combed out and cleaned, and passed through a screw-press, by which it is compressed into bales, and so prepared for the market, to reappear as mats and brushes, and other familiar objects. I wonder how many people, as they rub off English mud on such cocoa-mats, ever give a thought to the beautiful isles where that fibre was grown, or to the regiment of wild, almost naked, savages—the “foreign labour”—who, from one circumstance or another, have each left the far-away isle he calls home, to come and work the strange machinery on the white man’s plantation! At daybreak, after a hurried breakfast, we left the lovely island with much regret. A strong wind and a heavy sea gave us a rough, wet, unpleasant day while we crossed Natewa Bay, off Vanua Levu—thirty miles of open sea. Then we once more neared the land, entered the passage of Namooka, and were again in smooth water. Oh the blessedness of being safe inside the reef!—the delight of that sudden change from tossing in miserable discomfort on the great waste of unreasoning waters, to the perfect repose of gliding over the calm untroubled lake that lies within the mighty coral breakwater which the raging breakers may never overpass!