offering payment to Taia for the damage done, which, however, Taia was too seriously offended to receive, and I do not wonder at it. “The crowd began to disperse, and John was taking Nalihi off for a day’s work under his own eye, in case of his coming in contact with Taia again, when I put a graceful finish to the proceedings by going off into a fainting fit under the cocoa-nut trees! John said I managed bravely, all except that; but I do think that after _seven_ Earthquakes and such a scene, I had a good right to get up some demonstration, and it was the first I ever perpetrated for the public benefit! “We had three more Earthquakes that day, but slight, making _ten_ in all; and I took care at night to provide for emergencies by putting a supply of blankets on the verandah, as there is not a moment to snatch clothes when they come, and we had felt chilly the night before. I got laughed at for what was termed my needless precaution; but we had hardly got into our first sleep, when another violent Earthquake turned us out, and we were thankful for them. It was not so bad as some, however, and we got a sleep till morning without further disturbance, as the grand performance did not come off till next evening at nine o’clock. “John was busy in the bath-room, with the girls, damping paper for next day’s printing, I was in the dining-room, jotting in my journal the events of the day, when we all had to rush out with the most frightful Earthquake that had yet taken place. The house danced, the windows rattled awfully, and F. woke up with the first of it screaming in terror, but M. took it more gently, telling him it was _nice_. It might have been nice to feel ourselves rocked on the bosom of mother Earth (we lay down on the ground at a safe distance from the house, which we expected to fall every moment), could we have been sure she would not open up and receive us into a closer embrace! “The heaving must, I think, have continued nearly five minutes, and we had just got into the house again, still trembling with agitation, when a terrible gust of wind and roar of the sea half prepared us for the shouting of the Natives, who called to us that the sea had actually come close to our gate! We went out and found Natives up to the waist in water, where it had been bush two or three minutes before. We heard something flapping, and Yawaci picked up a large fish about twelve feet from our gate; and as the tidal wave receded, they were left in hundreds, which the Natives spent most of that night and next day in gathering. An enormous turtle was found too among a lot of _débris_,—‘Jehovah’s turtle,’ the Natives called it, owing to the way in which it was found.