The house is at this moment full of people, who have assembled from far and near to talk to Mr or Mrs Langham—men, women, and children. Naturally there is a considerable amount of chattering, to me incomprehensible. But it sounds musical, and rather like Italian, liquid, and full of vowels; not only simple vowels, but compounds, in which each letter is distinctly sounded, as _ai_, _au_, _ei_, _eu_, _oi_, _ou_, and _iu_. There are very few guttural or hissing sounds. You constantly hear names in which every other letter is a vowel, as, for example, Namosimalua, Natavutololo, Naivuruvuru, Verata, Verani, Ndrondro-vakawai, Lewe-ni-lovo, Vaka-loloma, Toa-levu, &c. The first words I learnt were of course the morning and evening greetings. _Siandra?_ (are you awake?) _Sa mothe?_ (are you asleep?) to which the people add _na maramma_ (lady), or _na turanga_ (lord), or _saka_ (sir). When they say _Eo saka_ (yes, sir) very fast, it sounds as if they were saying it in English, which at first, hearing it from the students, I supposed to be the case. Few and laconic are my own phrases. _Maroroya_ is a prayer to those around me to be careful; _kusa kusa_ begs them to make haste; _sara sara_ (to look about one), fully satisfies any one who might wonder what I was staring at, and comes home to the Fijian mind as quite a natural condition; _sa legge mothe_, though no means courteous, advises them to go to sleep and leave me alone. What chiefly catches my ear are the number of words formed by reduplication, as _vesi vesi_, a little spear; _vale vale_, a little house; _kende kende_, a mountain; _noko noko_, ironwood; _vula vula_, white; _dre dre_, difficult; _mothe mothe_, bed (_mothe_ means sleep); _yau yau_, mist; _kata kata_, boiling; _lia lia_, silly; _wai wai_, oil; _levu_ is big; _lei lei_, small; _vulu vulu_, cramfull; _velo velo_, a canoe; _reki reki_, joy; _vuvu_, jealous; _dronga dronga_, hoarse, &c. And so in the names of places. I hear of Loma Loma, Somo Somo, Sau Sau, Drua Drua, Ruku Ruku, Savu Savu, and so on. In case you care to count in Fijian, here are the numerals. One, two, three, &c. _Dua_, _rua_, _tolu_, _va_, _lima_, _ono_, _vitu_, _walu_, _ciwa_ (_thiwa_), _tini_. Then come _tine ka dua_, _tine ka rua_, and so on up to twenty. There are certain nouns which in themselves express numbers, as: _sasa_, ten mats; _rara_, ten pigs; _bure_, ten clubs; _bola_, a hundred canoes; _selavo_, a thousand cocoa-nuts. These are used in combination with ordinary numerals, thus: _Rua sasa_, twenty mats; _tini selavo_, ten thousand nuts. I am told that the language is remarkably rich, and expresses minute shades of ideas. Thus there are three words for the possessive pronouns, varying with the nature of the noun following, as _my_ food, _my_ drink, or _my_ canoe. Personal pronouns are equally varied; there are no less than six words answering to our _we_.