oa, Epi an

eak French nor the Resident English, negotiations were carried on in biche la mar, a language in which it is impossible to talk about anything but the simplest matters of everyday life. Things got still worse when the agent became more and more intoxicated, in spite of the small quantities of liquor we allowed him. I had to act as interpreter, a most ungrateful task, as the planter soon began to insult the Resident, and I had to translate his remarks and the Resident's answers. At last, funny as the whole affair was in a way, it became very tiresome; happily, matters came to a sudden close by the planter's

ian missionary there gives the entire credit for this pleasant fact to his exertions, as the natives are all converted. But as in other completely Christianized distri

charm of a country consists so entirely in its colouring, any modification of the atmosphere and light cause such a change in its character that the same view may look either like Paradise or entirely dull and inhospitable. What had b

natives have nearly all disappeared or become quite degenerate. We spent our time in visits

Many a vessel has found protection there from storm or cyclone. The entrance to the bay is narrow, and at the anchorage we were so completely landlocked that we might have imagi

n preferred to join the son of the French planter at Port Sandwich in a visit to the

he bushes; he seems part of the silent, luxuriant world around him, a being strange to us, a part of those realms which we are used to imagine as void of feeling and incapable of thought. But a word breaks the spell, intelligence gleams in his face, and what, so far, has seemed a strange being, belonging rather to the lower animals than to human-kind, shows himself a man, and becomes equal to ourselves. Thus the endless, inhospitable jungle, without open spaces or streets, without prairies and sun, that dense tangle of lianas and tree-trunks, shelters men like ourselves. I

G-GROUND NEAR PORT SANDWI

ong stamens fall slowly down and cover the ground with a brilliant carpet. Dogs bark, roosters crow and from a hut a man creeps out-others emerge from the bush and from half-hidden houses which at first we had not noticed. At some distance stand the women and children in timid amazement, and then begins a chat

t not rather true that we flee from nature, as its most intense manifestations are oppressive to us? Is not the savage, living so very close to nature, more its master, or at least its friend, th

lth, the sores, the brutality of social life; but these are really only ripples on an otherwise s

with the water at low tide, so that it then lies nearly dry, and one can walk on the reefs, jumping over the wide crevices in which the sea roars and gurgles with the rise and fall of the breakers outside. These ever-growing reefs would surround the whole coast were it not for the fresh water that oozes out from the l

acht lay in deep green water, smooth as glass, while beyond th

mass lying in pools; this is a delicacy highly valued by the Chinese and therefore a frequent article of exportation. The animals are collected, cut open, dried and shipped. There was the ugly mur?na, which goes splashing and winding like a snake between boulders, and threatens the intruder with poisonous l

n the coral were mostly mangrove