Our next picnic was to the romantic Levoni valley at the back of this island. We sailed past Moturiki and two smaller isles, and then rowed two miles up a cool pleasant river with deep green shade till we reached a landing-place, whence we walked a short distance to the clean, tidy little native town of Baretta. Mr Maudslay and Baron von Hügel walked all the way across the mountains, a tough day’s work. I walked up the valley with Sir Arthur and Colonel Pratt, but stopped half-way to sketch the splendid tree-ferns. We hurried back, intending to start at four o’clock to catch the tide, but found all the children of both the Roman Catholic and Wesleyan schools assembled in separate flocks. They looked very nice with their pretty necklaces and fringes of flowers and bright leaves worn over the little kilt of native cloth, and across the chest. Each party performed a small _méké_, and did a little reading and writing, although Captain Knollys, as admiral of our fleet, deemed the delay highly imprudent, for the tide was falling fast. As it was, we had to walk some distance through mangrove-swamp and tall reeds, and it was 6 P.M. (the invariable hour of sunset) ere we embarked. So we had to row home in the dark, in danger from many coral patches, but reached Nasova safely at 9 P.M., the children pretty well tired out. Last Tuesday our picnic was at a pretty sandy bay, shaded by large trees, seven miles along the coast in the opposite direction; but Sir Arthur and Mr Gordon were both unwell, and could not come, and Sir William Hackett also failed. On our way back we landed at Waitova, where the native police have their headquarters—a pretty, shady place, with a pleasant stream, the upper pools of which were Commodore Goodenough’s favourite bathing-place. Captain Olive lives there with his men, in a regular native house, and sleeps on a pile of about twenty fine Fijian mats. He has no chair, and no furniture. His glass and crockery at present consist of one cup and one tumbler. He feeds native-fashion, having his food brought to him on plaited trays and banana-leaves, the only remarkable object in the house being a large yangona-bowl. We went down to spend an afternoon there one day, and he fed us with sweet native puddings and pine-apples.