Though the people are so very friendly, and in many respects very nice, still this is undoubted life among savages; and after a while there is considerable sameness in halting at one village after another, taking up our quarters in its best house, which invariably consists only of one large room, the lower half of which is generally full of natives all day. Most of them clear out at night; but generally at least once a-day—sometimes twice in one day—they bring us a feast, consisting of a pig roasted whole—a sucking-pig, or an old one, as the case may be—wrapped up in large plantain-leaves, many baskets of cooked yams and _taros_, and native puddings tied up in leaves. Boiled vegetables (sometimes fish and crawfish) are brought in and offered again in the evening. Besides the regular feasts provided by each village, many of the marriage-parties send in offerings of food, as the parson’s share of their feast, so we are in no danger of starving. Yet the people really are very poor, and, except on such festal occasions as these, live only on yams. But wherever we have halted—and sometimes several times in the course of a day—“a feast” has been brought for us,—a procession of women carrying baskets full of cooked vegetables, purple or white yams, _taro_, and sweet potatoes, fowls in cooking-pots, fish, crawfish, prawns, and native puddings made of banana, and grated cocoa-nut sweetened with sugar-cane, and served in a large banana-leaf. At some places large fresh-water mussels, greatly resembling those of our Scotch rivers, have been supplied, and proved excellent. When served at table they resemble poached eggs, and when their thick white skin is cut open they yield a delicacy suggestive rather of a French _cuisine_ than of a Fijian hut. Where these abound they form an important article of food, as is shown by the piles of purple-lined shells which lie thickly strewn round the villages, and which made me wonder whether the pearl-yielding mussel of our Scotch rivers might not be found equally useful as an addition to the limited bill of fare of our own poor. Beef and mutton are luxuries which have only been introduced by white men for their own use, and are probably not to be found anywhere save in Levuka, the capital of the isles. But pigs were imported at an earlier period, and quickly found such favour with the people that they now roam at large in every village, and a feast of roast pork is to a Fijian the very crown of bliss.