In long-distance swimming the natives adopt a sort of side-stroke, in which nothing but the head is above water. They move smoothly and rapidly through the water, the legs and the right arm giving the propulsion, and the left hand striking downwards under the body. When a quick spurt is required, they use the overhand action with both arms alternately, with the cheek resting flat on the water as the arm on that side is driven aft. With this action they can swim at greater speed than all but the best European swimmers. They can swim immense distances, and no swimming-board or float is ever used, as in the Eastern Pacific, in surf swimming, except by children in their play. [Pageheader: METHOD OF DIVING] There are many swimming games, such as chasing a fugitive and wrestling in the water. On a calm evening the water is black with the heads of laughing men and women. I have joined in these sports, and though I am at home in the water, as swimmers go in England, I confess that when I was pulled down by the legs from below, and ducked from above when I tried to come up, I was glad to escape from them with my life. In the game of _ririka_ (leaping) a cocoanut log is laid slantwise from the beach to an upright post in the water. The people run up this incline in endless file, and their plunges whiten the surrounding water with foam. The Fijian is a good diver, though inferior to the Rotuman and the native of the Line Islands. When diving he does not plunge head first from the swimming position, but draws his head under, and reverses the position of his body under water without creating a swirl. If the water is not too deep, when he reaches the bottom he lies flat with his nose touching the sand, his hands being behind the back, and propels himself with incredible speed by digging his toes into the sand. English divers, who can realize the difficulty of this manoeuvre, may be inclined to doubt this statement, and for their benefit I will relate how I came to have ocular demonstration. At Christmas-time in 1886 I organized athletic sports at Fort Carnarvon, an isolated little quasi-military post garrisoned by fifty men of the Armed Native Constabulary in the heart of Vitilevu. The mountaineers of the neighbouring villages were invited to compete with the soldiers, who were recruited from the coast. In wrestling and running the soldiers held their own, but when it came to swimming and diving they were nowhere. The course was a backwater of the river about 8 feet deep, and I went down the bank 150 yards from the starting-point to judge the winner. Our most expert diver was a Mathuata coast man, and he came to the surface 20 yards short of me, after being down 75 seconds. I had already written him down as winner, when a head bobbed up fully 20 yards beyond me. It was a sooty-skinned, insignificant little mountaineer, who did not seem much distressed, and was so pleased with our applause that he offered to repeat the feat. I