Once their land-titles are proved, and they can sell their estates to new-comers with full purses and fresh energy, times will doubtless improve, and it will be shown what these isles are really worth. As yet the golden age cannot be said to have dawned, and the resources of the country are still unknown. The cotton trade, which for a while was so flourishing, has for the present utterly failed, the silky sort grown here having lost favour with manufacturers. Coffee, sugar, and tobacco are all undeveloped. At present the principal articles of trade in the isles are a preparation of dried cocoa-nut known as _coppra_, from which oil is afterwards extracted, and the Bêches-de-mer, a species of hideous, large, black sea-slug, which, when dried, resemble lumps of india-rubber, and from which the Chinese make a rich soup, said to be equal in flavour to that produced from the far-famed gelatinous birds’ nests. This, and the pearly shell of a huge oyster, being natural products, afford occupation to many who have failed in more settled work. Consequently a large proportion of the white men who find life in Fiji so hard a struggle, are more or less directly engaged in the Bêches-de-mer and pearl-shell fisheries; and there are not wanting croakers who foresee a time when this supply will be exhausted. I believe the only new settlers since annexation are two Chinamen (as usual, always enterprising and cheerful in face of difficulties, and making money where no one else can do so). They have just rented ten acres of land here to start a vegetable garden, so we foresee an abundant supply for the town, and wealth for the deserving gardeners. Strange that no European should have thought of trying this. I do not, however, think that it could ever answer for poor working men to come here—certainly not as simple workers—for, of course, no one would dream of paying wages at European, or still less at colonial, rates, when he can get black labour for so little.