To-day, according to custom, we kept the Christening Feast of the children who were Baptized last night. The parents of the children gave a most beautiful pig, and the women attended to the cooking, the men dispersing in many directions each in quest of his own business or pleasure. I went with a party to Ruosi where we bathed, and got back in time for the opening of the ovens, and the division of the feast. I said grace and then each one partook of his or her share of the plentiful repast, all eating together in the most harmonious fashion, and not as in old days the sexes keeping religiously apart. This middle wall of separation has been almost entirely broken down, and family life and sociability have taken the place of the old seclusion and division. It was a most glorious night but the people were too tired to dance, and we all retired early to our houses. I kept busy till very late writing up arrears of correspondence and reading, and was the last in the village out of bed. _Tuesday, August 17th._--The most glorious day from earliest morning till now at night, the evening one of the most beautiful I ever saw, when the moon rose it was a most perfect night above and below, the sky studded with myriads of stars and absolutely cloudless, here everything hushed in peaceful slumber, except the restless, ever-singing crickets, whose buzz is continuously kept up by night and day. At the heathen end of the village there was a sort of Irish wake kept up to-day, but there was no “tangi” or any ceremony except a pig being killed, and a great feast being prepared. Formerly, death days were kept with great strictness, and the day of death and the 100th were observed with great festivities. I have seen nothing of the kind now for years, and I fancied the custom had quite died out. It was supposed in old days when the people were still heathen, that the disembodied spirit, after it left its earthly tenement, hung about hungry and restless on the thick creepers in the bush, and on the day of death a great feast was prepared for it, after which it retired to the place of departed spirits called Banoi. This same Banoi is near Tasmouri, but I have never seen it. The idea, I believe, is that when the spirit is at length at rest, its stone is placed in a certain cave or pit there exists there, and the people who have seen the place, tell me that certainly there far inland are smooth seaside stones laid in wonderful regularity, and in old days supposed to be put there by successive spirits in order as they died. Until quite recently, no one ventured into this ghostly place, and it was regarded as eminently sacred. Some day I hope to go there and examine it for myself. I cannot find out the rationale of the subsequent death days, but they seem to have more to do with the living than the dead, and are supposed to show the departed one that he or she is still kept in faithful and affectionate memory.