The king and several others gave me rudely ornamented shell rings. A lady to whom I gave a silver dollar gives me a pretty shell which she had herself ornamented with the sharp end of a stone, also she gave me her petticoats which females wear when at the sea shore. (I have these momentoes yet.) The petticoat consists of a waist-band to which is attached loose ringlets down to the knees, all made of sea grass. Once I caught two girls winking, laughing and making fun of me. All females stand sideways to the males and look and talk over their shoulder. Many have fine physiques. There are few quadrupeds here, but this seems to be the home of birds. The cassowary is larger than an ostrich. Their flesh is said to taste like turkey. The plumage of some birds is wonderful. Especially the lyrebird, who struts like a tom-turkey. Over twenty species of the bird of paradise are said to live here. All kind of tropical fruit grow wild and in great abundance. Bread fruit trees grow quickly and furnish 500 to 1,000 pounds of food each, substance about equal to oatmeal. Many from Chicago may well envy these kind, timid, primitive people their sunshine career as compared to our daily struggle for ascendancy. As I am about to leave these people, who are huddled around me, out of curiosity I look one after another of each sex squarely in the eyes for recognition, and I get the response everytime. Not that steady stare of the snake, dog, or gorilla, but that conscious response of affection between souls. This satisfies me that men are not improved beasts, but rather distinct creatures endowed with certain soul-responsive looks, self-controlling powers, gifts which cannot be mentally experienced. April 24. After several days among the verdure islands with broad, glistening, sandy shores, strewn with large and small shells, I find myself among the Solomon Islands, about 500 miles from New Guinea. I am glad I came here, for it seems like a dream of the long, long ago. With the exception of a few naked natives, flying foxes, and shore fowls, these islands must resemble the great lake region at home in the carboniferous age. The age after the great Mississippi Valley inland sea had fled away from the shores. The age before the vegetation had lured the sea family through the long reptilean age into the mammalian age, when the mastodon roamed the palm groves of Michigan and the great dinotherium lived on the marshy plains of Colorado, before the Rocky Mountains had raised their now silent, dreary forms. If there was a day in Illinois when the Crustacean invertebrate families lined the hot ocean shores and the vegetation grew thirty feet high, it must have resembled this equatorial region now, for although clear today, I am told it rains almost daily, and up the mountain sides as far as I can see the vegetation is wonderful.