cabin for her accommodation, and without more ado she took up her quarters on board the _Seignelay_, with no other escort or chaperonage than that of the good bishop. From Fiji the _Seignelay_ proceeded to Tonga, in the Friendly Islands, where, in the usages of the population and in the insular antiquities, Miss Cumming found much to interest her and her readers. As might be expected, the old picturesqueness of the native life is fast disappearing under the pressure of Western civilization, and we have reason to be thankful to those travellers who do their best to catch its waning features, and transfer them as faithfully as may be to the printed page. The chief archaeological curiosities here are the tombs of the old Tongan kings, cyclopean monuments built up of huge volcanic blocks, which seem to have been brought from the Wallis group of islands in open canoes, and erected on their present site with an immense expenditure of human labour. Scarcely less remarkable is the great solitary dolmen, which still exists intact, though of its origin nothing is known, even in tradition. But that it marks the last resting-place of some great chief or hero may be inferred from the fact that until within the last few years an immense _Kana_ tent stood upon the transverse capstone of the dolmen, and that feasts were celebrated on the spot. As Miss Cumming reminds, similar celebrations take place in many parts of Britain and Brittany "at the stones" to the present day. From Tonga Miss Cumming was conveyed to Samoa, where she was very hospitably received by the Samoan notables, and might have enjoyed herself greatly, but for the civil war in which the group is always plunged. It is to the credit of the inhabitants, however, that they agree to abstain from fighting on at least one day of the week. In their manners and customs they retain more of the primitive simplicity than is found now-a-days in most of the Polynesian islands.