DEAR EISA,—The anxiously expected mail came in this morning and brought your welcome letter.... I am still staying with Mrs Havelock, for the new rooms at Nasova progress slowly. It is very difficult to push on work in a country where _malua_ (by-and-by) is the reigning principle in every action of life. But for myself, individually, I am most cosy here, and we all meet continually. Lady Gordon has instituted weekly picnics just for our own party, chiefly to get the gentlemen away from their incessant writing. We have already had three of these, so we have seen a good deal of this isle of Ovalau, and very lovely it is. We always go by boat; indeed there are no paths (except a footpath along the shore) where a sane man would venture to ride even if there were horses, which there are not. Only an enterprising butcher’s boy ventures to clamber up day by day to bring needful supplies to such houses as are perched on the steep hillsides. Captain Olive also has a horse; and now Nasova owns a pony on which Abbey gallops into Levuka to forage for the house. The astonishment of the natives at first sight of a horse knew no bounds. They gathered round it, exclaiming, “Oh, the great pig!” and one rashly approached to pull its tail, and was considerably startled by receiving a very severe kick. I suppose you know that one of the remarkable peculiarities of these isles is the strange lack of animal life. There were literally no indigenous four-footed creatures except rats and flying-foxes, and even the native rat has died out since foreign rats arrived from ships. Even the pigs, which in some places now run wild in the jungle, were originally introduced by the Tongans, who also brought cats, ducks, and fowls. As to other animals, such names as _seepi_ (mutton), _goti_ (goat), _pussi_ (cat), _ose_ (horse), _collie_[9] (dog), and _bullama kow_ (beef), sufficiently betray their foreign origin. Really I do miss the troops of monkeys so familiar in India and Ceylon. Happily the list of Fijian reptiles is equally small, so that flies and mosquitoes are almost the only creatures we have to combat, and certainly they are an irritating plague. We know that centipedes and scorpions do exist, but they are very rare. I wish I could say as much for the cockroaches which infest every house, and are in their turn devoured by large spiders. I lay awake this morning watching the process. The unlucky cockroach contrived to get entangled in a strong web, and old Mr Spider darted out and tied him up securely, and then feasted at his leisure. Of course we carefully cherish these spider allies, and glory in webs which would greatly horrify your housemaids. The ants are also most energetic friends, and organise burial parties for the cockroaches as fast as we can kill them. Every morning we see solemn funerals moving across the verandah to the garden, and these are parties of about one hundred of the tiniest ants dragging away the corpse of a large cockroach.