On June 16, Mr. Patteson was landed at Lifu, for his residence there, with the five chiefs, his twelve boys, and was hospitably welcomed to the large new house by the Samoan.  He and four boys slept in one of the corner rooms, the other eight lads in another, the Rarotongan teacher, Tutoo, and his wife in a third.  The central room was parlour, school, and hall, and as it had four unglazed windows, and two doors opposite to each other, and the trade-wind always blowing, the state of affairs after daylight was much like that which prevailed in England when King Alfred invented lanterns, while in the latter end of June the days were, of course, as short as they could be on the tropic of Capricorn, so that Patteson got up in the dark at 5-30 in the morning.

At 7 the people around dropped in for prayers, which he thought it better not to conduct till his position was more defined.  Then came breakfast upon yams cooked by being placed in a pit lined with heated stones, with earth heaped over the top.  Mr. and Mrs. Tutoo, with their white guest, sat at the scrap of a table, ’which, with a small stool, was the only thing on four legs in the place, except an occasional visitor in the shape of a pig.’  Then followed school.  Two hundred Lifu people came, and it was necessary to hold it in the chapel.  One o’clock, dinner on yams, and very rarely on pig or a fowl, baked or rather done by the same process; and in the afternoon some reading and slate work with the twelve Melanesians, and likewise some special instruction to a few of the more promising Lifuites.  At 6.30, another meal of yams, but this time Patteson had recourse to his private store of biscuit; and the evening was spent in talk, till bedtime at 9 or 9.30.  It was a thorough sharing the native life; but after a few more experiments, it was found that English strength could not be kept up on an exclusive diet of yams, and the Loyalty Isles are not fertile.  They are nothing but rugged coral, in an early stage of development; great ridges, upheaved, bare and broken, and here and there with pits that have become filled with soil enough to grow yams and cocoa-nuts.

The yams—­except those for five of the lads, whose maintenance some of the inhabitants had undertaken—­were matter of purchase, and formed the means of instruction in the rules of lawful exchange.  A fixed weight of yams were to constitute prepayment for a pair of trousers, a piece of calico, a blanket, tomahawk, or the like, and all this was agreed to, Cho being a great assistance in explaining and dealing with his people.  But it proved very difficult to keep them up to bringing a sufficient supply, and as they had a full share of the universal spirit of haggling, the commissariat was a very harassing and troublesome business, and as to the boys, it was evident that the experiment was not successful.  Going to New Zealand was seeing the world.  Horses, cows, sheep, a town, soldiers, &c., were to be seen there,