The next day was spent in doing the honours of the ship, a crowd on board all day; and on July 2 the Bishop landed again with Mr. Atkin, and mounted up to this wonderful nest, where all these measurements were made.  It proved much more agreeable to look at from below than to inhabit ’the low steaming bamboo huts—­the crowds, the dirt, the squalling of babies—­you can’t sit or stand, or touch anything that is not grimy and sooty and muddy.  It is silly to let these things really affect one, only that it now seems rather to knock me up.  After such a day and night I am very tired, come back to our little ship as to a palace, wash, and sit down on a clean, if not a soft stool, and am free for a little while from continual noise and the necessity of making talk in an imperfectly known language.

’It is really curious to see how in some way our civilised mode of life unfits one for living among these races.  It is not to be denied that the want of such occupations as we are employed in is a large cause of their troubles.  What are they to do during the long hours of night, and on wet, pouring days?  They can’t read, they can’t see in their huts to do any work, making baskets, &c.  They must lie about, talking scandal and acquiring listless indolent habits.  Then comes a wild reaction.  The younger people like excitement as much as our young men like hunting, fishing, shooting, &c.  How can they get this?  Why, they must quarrel and fight, and so they pass their time.  It does seem almost impossible to do much for people so circumstanced; yet it was much the same in Mota and elsewhere, where things are altered for the better.’

It was bad and trying weather, and it was well to have only two old Banks Islanders on board, besides three Ysabel lads.  The Bishop had plenty of time for writing; and for the first time in his life ’pronounced himself forward with that Report which was always on his mind.’  He goes on:  ’I read a good deal, but I don’t say that my mind is very active all the time, and I have some schooling.  Yet it is not easy to do very much mental work.  I think that I feel the heat more than I used to do, but that may be only my fancy.

’You meantime are, I hope, enjoying fine summer weather.  Certainly it must be a charming place that you have, close to that grand Church and grand scenery.  I think my idea of a cosy home is rather that of a cottage in the Isle of Wight, or, better still, a house near such a Cathedral as Wells, in one of the cottages close to the clear streams that wind through and about the Cathedral precincts.  But I can form no real notions about such things.  Only I am pretty sure that there is little happiness without real hard work.  I do long sometimes for a glorious Cathedral service, for the old chants, anthems, not for “functions” and “processions,” &c.  I have read Freeman’s pamphlet on “Ritual " with interest; he really knows what he writes about, and has one great object and a worthy one, the restoration of the universal practice of weekly communion as the special Sunday service.  That all our preachifying is a wide departure from the very idea of worship is self-evident, when it is made more than a necessary part of the religious observance of the Lord’s Day, and catechising is worth far more than preaching (in the technical sense of the word).’