the walk under their umbrageous covering cool and pleasant.  The gay flowers of the hibiscus tiliaceus, as well as the splendid huth or Barringtonia speciosa, covered with its beautiful flowers, the petals of which are white, and the edges of the stamina delicately tinged with pink, give to the trees when in full bloom a magnificent appearance; the hibiscus rosa-chinensis, or kowa of the natives also grows in luxuriance and beauty.  The elegant flowers of these trees, with others of more humble and less beautiful tints, everywhere meet the eye near the paths, occasionally varied by plantations of the ahan or taro, arum esculentum, which, from a deficiency of irrigation, is generally of the mountain variety.  Of the sugar-cane they possess several varieties, and it is eaten in the raw state; a small variety of yam, more commonly known by the name of the Rotuma potato, the ule of the natives, is very abundant; the ulu or bread-fruit, pori or plantain and the vi, (spondias dulcis, Parkinson,) or, Brazilian plum, with numerous other kinds, sufficiently testify the fertility of the island.  Occasionally the mournful toa or casuarina equisetifolia, planted in small clumps near the villages or surrounding the burial-places, added beauty to the landscape.

The native houses are very neat; they are formed of poles and logs, the roof being covered with the leaves of a species of sagus palm, named hoat by the natives, and highly valued by them for that purpose on account of their durability; the sides are covered with the plaited sections of the cocoa-nut branches, which form excellent coverings.

The natives are a fine-looking and well-formed people; they are of good dispositions, but are much addicted to thieving, which seems indeed to be a national propensity; they are of a light copper colour, and the men wear the hair long and stained at the extremities of a reddish brown colour; sometimes they tie the hair in a knot behind, but the most prevailing custom is to permit it to hang over the shoulders.  The females may be termed handsome, of fine forms, and although possessing a modest demeanour, flocked on board in numbers on the ship’s arrival.  The women before marriage have the hair cut close and covered with the shoroi, which is burnt coral mixed with the gum of the bread-fruit tree; this is removed after marriage and their hair is permitted to grow long, but on the death of a chief or their parents it is cut close as a badge of mourning.  Both sexes paint themselves with a mixture of the root of the turmeric plant (curcuma longa) and cocoa-nut oil, which frequently changed our clothes and persons of an icteroid hue, from our curiosity to mingle with them in the villages—­theirs to come on board the ship.