This place is well described by its name. It is really Na Vatu (The Rock), being a huge rock-mass, quite detached from the great Kauvandra range of mountains, and standing alone on a level shore. The village in which I am living is on the sea-level, but a steep path up the beautiful crag leads to a lovely village, called Nai Songoliko, which consists of a number of small houses perched wherever they can find room all over the cliff, almost hidden by bread-fruit and other bowering trees, which cling to the rock as if by magic. From this point a narrow spur runs inland, and the view from there is quite beautiful—the bluest sea, dotted with isles and tinted by patches of coral-reef, lying outspread to right and left of the cliff. Each of these villages has a tidy well-built church. I think I have explored every corner of the great rock, and many of the tiny homes which lie so quaintly niched among the rocky boulders. Some of the people produced hidden treasures, which they offered me for sale; and I have bought several good things, including some stone axes. I think I must have mentioned to you that these are only just now passing out of common use here: they are brought to us tied with native string to a piece of wood shaped like a bent knee. Sometimes I see instances of the actual transition from the stone to the iron age, when some lucky man, having got a Birmingham adze, rejects his old stone celt and ties his new acquisition on to the same wooden handle. In one house I found a pretty young woman with a baby a fortnight old. Both were covered from head to foot with turmeric, with which their clothes were also smeared. I believe this is a precaution against the devices of certain evil spirits, of whom many of the people still stand in as great awe as many a devout old Highlander does of the bogies and warlocks of our own mountains. Those dark ranges of the Kauvandra are the especial haunts of various fairies and brownies, and we have heard legends enough to make us wish that some competent person would set about collecting them ere the old lore dies away. All over this crag and the neighbourhood there are luxuriant masses of the intensely blue clitoria, as also of a bean which is good for food, and bears white blossoms. The effect of the white and blue is so charming that I have proclaimed a general offer of fish-hooks, needles, and thread to all children who will collect seeds for me. So every evening a little troop of traders await my return; and I have now amassed a quantity of seed, which I intend to sow broadcast all over the hill behind Nasova.