From this scene of hope and encouragement the ‘Southern Cross’ sailed on the sixteenth, and passing Erromango, came in sight of Fate, also called Sandwich, a wooded island beautiful beyond description, but with a bad character for cannibalism, and where the Samoan teachers had been murdered.  So the approach was cautious, and the vessel kept a mile from the shore, and was soon surrounded with canoes, one of them containing a native who had been instructed in Samoa, and was now acting as teacher.

’The first canoe that came had five men on board.  Girdles of beautifully plaited cocoa-nut fibre round their waists were their only clothing, but some had wreaths of flowers and green leaves round their heads, and most of them wore mother-of-pearl shells, beads, &c., round their necks and in their ears.  They do not tattoo, but brand their skins.  All five came, and presently three more, and then another; but seeing a large double canoe with perhaps twenty men in her coming close, we stood away.  Two of our visitors chose to stay, and we have them on board now:  Alsoff, a man of perhaps forty-five, and Mospa, a very intelligent young man from whom I am picking up words as fast as I can.  F. would have laughed to have seen me rigging them out in calico shirts, buttoning them up.  Mospa gave me his wooden comb, which they push through their hair, as you ladies do coral or gold pins at parties.  Another fellow whose head was elaborately frizzled and plastered with coral lime, departed with one of my common calico pocket-handkerchiefs with my name in Joan’s marking.  This is to adorn his head, and for aught I know, is the first, and certainly the best specimen of handwriting in the island.  We hope to call at all these islands on our way back from the north, but at present we only dodge a few canoes, &c.

’July 20.—­I suppose you like to know all little things, so I tell you that our Fate friends, being presented each with a blanket, just wound themselves up on the cabin floor, one close to Leonard and me, and slept away in style; that I soon taught them to eat with a knife and fork, and to-day have almost succeeded in making them believe that plum pudding (our Sunday dish) is a fine thing.

’July 21.—­All day we have been very slowly drifting along the west side of Espiritu Santo.  A grand mountainous chain runs along the whole island, the peaks we estimate at 4,000 feet high.  This alone is a fine sight—­luxuriant vegetation to nearly the top of the peaks, clouds resting upon the summit of the range, from the evaporation caused by the vast amount of vegetable matter.