“It is getting very late and I must pass over all else and tell you what a charming time we had at Erromanga, where the Mission Synod was held this year. Mrs. McDonald and I were the only ladies to keep Mrs. Robertson company; and I was complimented upon now being the “mother” of the Mission, and carrying my honours quite becomingly—having become plump and vigorous since the Hurricane.... It seemed like fairy land to enter dear Mrs. Robertson’s pretty, shady, cool house after enduring two days’ suffocation with the horrid bilge water on board the _Dayspring_.... Every day brought us fresh pleasures, afternoon rambles on the mountains and walks by the river course up that beautiful valley, when ‘the brethren’ were at liberty to dance attendance on us, having all their Synod business over before dinner.... How pleasantly those days flew past, only they can understand who have been cut off from kindred spirits as we are! We three ladies were, of course, all that could be wished for (?); and every one of the Missionaries was kinder than another. Even in Synod, where Ministers are apt to indulge in the grace of _candour_ to an uncalled-for degree, there was not a jarring word—owing, perhaps, to that bilge water having taken all the bile out of them on the voyage!... The house is charmingly situated on terraced ground at the foot of a high mountain, near the centre of the Bay, with that lovely river to the right flowing past within a few yards of the enclosure.... Our eyes were constantly wandering off to the lovely scene before us,—and one with a history too! That very river was once reddened with the blood of Williams and of Harris; and the grass-covered mountain towering up from it was the scene of the Gordon tragedy,—while their grave-stones gleam white through the greenery on its opposite banks. Dear Mr. McNair’s grave is close beside them. All looked so peaceful now, with the _Dayspring_ lying quietly at anchor in the Bay, and canoes manned by _Christian_ Natives paddling about in its blue waters!