’Always your affectionate and grateful nephew,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

As soon as the ‘Southern Cross’ had carried Bishop Harper back to Lyttelton, the Melanesian voyage was recommenced, this time with a valuable assistant in Mr. Benjamin Dudley.  Mrs. Selwyn was again dropped at Norfolk Island, and five young Pitcairners were taken on board to serve as a boat’s crew, and also to receive instruction.

This was a more extensive voyage than the first, as more time could be spent on it, but there is less full description, as there was less time for writing; and besides, these coral islands are much alike.  Futuma was the first new island visited:—­

’The canoes did not venture to come off to us, so we went ashore in the boat, Bishop and I wading ankle-deep to the beach.  Forty or fifty natives under a deep overhanging rock, crouching around a fire, plenty of lads and boys, no women.  Some Tanna men in the group, with their faces painted red and black, hair (as you know) elaborately frizzled and dressed with coral lime.  The Futuma people speak a different language from those of Anaiteum, and the Tanna people speak a third (having, moreover, four dialects of their own).  These three islands are all in sight of each other.  Tanna has an active volcano, now smoking away, and is like a hot-bed, wonderfully fertile.  People estimate its population at 10,000, though it is not very large,—­ about thirty miles long.  At Futuma, the process by which these coral islands have been upheaved is well seen.  The volcanic rocks are lying under the coral, which has been gradually thrust upwards by them.  As the coral emerged, the animal went on building under water, continually working lower and lower down upon and over the volcanic formation, as this heaved in its upward course the coral formation out of the sea.’

Erromango was occupied by the Scottish Mission, and Mr. Gordon was then living there in peace and apparent security, when a visit was paid to him, and Patteson gathered some leaves in Dillon’s Bay, the spot where John Williams met his death sixteen years before, not, as now was understood, because he was personally disliked, but because he was unconsciously interfering with a solemnity that was going on upon the beach.

At Fate Isle, the people were said to be among the wildest in those seas.  When the ‘Royal Sovereign’ was wrecked, they had killed the whole crew, nineteen in number, eaten ten at once, and sent the other nine as presents to their friends.  Very few appeared, but there was a good ‘opening’ exchange of presents.