About noon we reached this town, Nanduri, which is the capital of this district of Mathuata. It is badly situated, being on a muddy shore, densely overgrown with mangrove, but it is very tidy and rather pretty. The quarters prepared for us were a tiny new house, built of coral-lime, and nicely matted. This, to the Fijian mind, is the very acme of architecture and foreign art. I confess to infinitely preferring the purely native house, with reed or leaf sides, and many doors. Food was immediately brought to us, according to the usual hospitable custom. Several women each carried a tray of plaited fibre, on which lay pieces of green banana-leaf, with yams of different sorts, _taro_, and sweet potatoes. Another had a black pot, in which was a fowl, which had been boiled with _taro_ tops, making an excellent soup; others had fresh-water prawns and small fish; and then came the height of culinary triumph, in several kinds of pudding with sweet sauce, all tied up in pieces of young banana-leaf, warmed over the fire to make them oil-proof, and looking like little green bags. Then came the formal customary little speeches of offering and accepting all these good things—of which we partook, and then went off to call upon the chief. The worthy man deemed it necessary quickly to don a shirt, with the tail worn outside, over his handsome chief-like drapery of _tappa_. He stood facing us for fully two minutes while he struggled with his buttons, ere he was ready to shake hands and welcome us to his town. Then he took us into his house to see his wife, after which ceremony our chief care was, as usual, to find some quiet shady corner where we might enjoy a bathe undisturbed. Our quest, however, proved unsatisfactory, the brook being shallow, and the group of admiring women and children unusually inquisitive. No wonder! Two white women were a sight rarely seen; and one being so tall, the other small, added interest to the spectacle. And when the pale creatures divested themselves of successive articles of raiment, so needlessly numerous, and then took off their boots, revealing stockings, and when the stockings gave place to feet many shades paler than the sun-browned face and hands, their curiosity on the subject knew no bounds; moreover, we were accompanied by Mrs Langham’s god-daughter, a very fair delicate little girl, whose sunny hair was always a source of delight to the people wherever we stopped. And indeed Mrs L. has herself such masses of beautiful long silky hair as might well astonish these women, accustomed from their childhood to have their own crisp locks cut within four inches of the head, round which it stands out like a halo—being always of a tawny sienna colour, from the lime with which it is so constantly washed.