One of the chief places of interest in this neighbourhood is the town of Na Sava, which is peopled by the former inhabitants of the isle of Malaki, from which they were driven out by the whites as an act of vengeance for the murder of a white man whose boat touched on their inhospitable shore. That, at least, is one version of the story. Malaki lies just off this coast, and Mr Leefe took me to see it. It is a pleasant spot, grassy and wooded, but now left desolate. To its people is attributed the honour of having been the first in these isles to invent pottery, an art which is here carried to a perfection far surpassing anything found in other groups of the Pacific. I believe that pottery of some sort is found in all parts of Melanesia—the best specimens having been brought from New Guinea, and some also from the Admiralty Isles, New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Isles, New Hebrides, and New Caledonia. But these are all exceedingly coarse, and devoid of all artistic pretension. In Polynesia, on the other hand, the manufacture of pottery is apparently totally unknown. The Fijians are, as you know, a mixed race—partly Polynesian, partly Melanesian. Whether they derived their first idea of pottery from their Melanesian ancestors, and then greatly improved upon it; or whether, as they themselves say, their master in the art was the mason-bee, it is impossible to determine. Certain it is that the form of the cooking and water vessels in use in every Fijian home greatly resembles that of the little clay nests which this busy creature builds in every convenient corner. On our glass windows, in the doorways, or under the eaves where the swallows of our own land are wont to place theirs, we find these little earthen homes, globular or oblong, with an opening at one side, terminating in a narrow neck or passage with turned-back lip.