To me, who have only to enjoy myself, there is an unspeakable charm in the easy-going open-air life here; and the air is wonderfully keen and bracing as compared with the climate of Levuka. We have had the thermometer at 74°, and have felt almost too cold. So all day long I wander about the isle, passing from one white sand bay to another, and keeping in the shelter of those great overhanging trees, whose dark foliage forms so perfect a screen from the ever-shining sun. The raised centre of the isle is, as I have told you, generally grassy; and here I sit morning and evening, overlooking the sea in every direction, and watching for the rare appearing of a sail. The only shade there, however, is that of the screw-pine, which grows abundantly, and makes an odd sketchable bit of foreground, with its long prickly leaves set screw-wise, and its roots like a cluster of white pillars, making the tree look as if it were walking on stilts. It bears a large scarlet or orange fruit, something like a pine-apple in appearance, but with so little on its woody sections to tempt the palate, that none save goat-herds, on whom the long day hangs heavy, care to gnaw them. True pine-apples have been planted in abundance, as also orange, lemon, and bread-fruit trees; so have the delicious native _keveeka_, which bears a fruit resembling a large transparent pink pear and answers the purpose of a cooling drink. Moreover, as I told you, Mr Leefe is planting thousands of young palms in every available crevice, on Sir Walter Scott’s principle of “Aye be stickin’ in a tree; it will be growing while ye are sleeping.” Close round the house there is a small kitchen-garden in which grow tiny tomatoes and the tree-pea—a shrub which bears pods very like those of our common green pea.