VEGETATION AT DINAWA. Some of the tree ferns grow to a height of 40 feet. ] The day for our departure now began to draw very near. All the specimens were safely packed, but the question of transport pressed more and more heavily. From the Dinawa people, as I have noted, little help was to be expected. The fittest of the men were abroad in the forest on foraging expeditions, and when we asked the women to carry for us, they replied that they could not come while their husbands were away. We sent out our boys to see what they could do in the surrounding country, but they invariably came back to report that they could recruit very few men. We ourselves, after a great deal of wearisome tramping from village to village, managed to enlist a meagre band of five fairly able-bodied assistants, but our party was still very inadequate. This was on September 22. A few days earlier, in pursuance of the compact the Ibala people had made with me, I had set the telegraph in motion, and told Fa-lo-foida to call up Kea-ka-mana, Kea-ka-mana to call up Tapua, and so on stage by stage to the distant home of my picturesque mountaineers, to tell them that the time had come to redeem their promise and earn the tobacco advanced on personal security alone. The calling accordingly began, and in less than ten minutes Ibala of the five days’ journey had received my summons. During the afternoon the answer arrived. Ibala was willing and would come. Accordingly, close to the time fixed for our departure—September 23—we were cheered by the return of our merry friends, who came like the honourable gentlemen they were to discharge their obligation.