You need not imagine that the bungalows here are like those bowers of delight I have described to you in other tropical countries. There are no wide verandahs, over which veils of luxuriant creepers weave garlands of delight, and no heavy scent of tropical blossoms perfumes the night air. Here few people have had time, or care, to cultivate flowers; and somehow those who have, have only succeeded on a _very_ small scale. Even the fireflies, which we demand as a positive right in all tropical lands, are very few and very dim. As to the houses, they are all alike hideous, being built of wood (weatherboard is the word), and roofed with corrugated iron or zinc, on which the mad tropical rains pour with deafening noise; or else the burning sun beats so fiercely as wellnigh to stifle the inmates, to whom the luxuries of punkahs and ice are unknown; and even baths are by no means a matter of course, as in other hot countries. We have not come to a land flowing with milk and honey in any sense. Daily food is both difficult to obtain and expensive. Fish is scarcely to be had at any price, though the sea swarms with many good kinds. Foreign vegetables are not to be got for love or money. The supply of fruit is very scant, consisting only of indifferent bananas, pine-apples, and oranges; and such as are brought to market are very poor. Milk is 1s. a quart; eggs, 3s. a dozen. Indifferent meat is about the same price as in England; poultry a good deal dearer. Washing varies from 4s. to 6s. a dozen, not including dresses or petticoats; and any lady who ventures to have her cuffs and collars, or other small pieces, washed at home, finds that not one of the scrubbing fraternity will undertake her work. To people accustomed to washing in India and Ceylon at 1s. a dozen, this is of itself a startling item. As to house-rent in Levuka, it is simply exorbitant: four guineas a-week being the moderate price paid, though taken by the year, for this tiny little one-storeyed bungalow, the whole of which, offices included, would easily fit into a moderately large room at home. And this is the country to which the Colonial Office sends men at ridiculously small salaries, because, as they were told ere leaving England, living would cost them nothing, and they could save all their pay! Why, a man without private fortune could hardly live here at all! Of course, all imported goods are necessarily expensive, having to pay freight first to Sydney and then to Levuka.