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was powerless to resist. My father smiled. My mother and sisters wept afresh. I bowed myself, nevertheless, to my fate. In a fortnight I bade my relations farewell all unworthy as I felt myself of their affection. Inwardly exultant, though decently uncheerful, I took passage a fortnight later in a barque trading to the Friendly and Navigators' Islands. She was called the Rotumah, belonging to Messrs. M'Donald, Smith, & Company, of Hunter Street, Sydney. Her captain was a Canadian named Robertson, of great experience in the island trade.

There were two other passengers—a lady going to join her brother who was in business at Nukulofa, in Tonga, and a fine old French priest whom we were taking to Samoa. The latter was very kind to me, and during our passage through the Friendly Islands I was frequently the guest of his brother missionaries at their various stations in the groups.

How shall I describe my feelings, landed at last among the charmed isles of the South, where I had come to stay, I told myself? Generally speaking, how often is there a savour of disappointment, of anticipation unrealised, when the wish is achieved! But the reality here was beyond the most brilliant mental pictures ever painted. All things were fresh and novel; the coral reefs skirting the island shore upon which the surf broke ceaselessly with sullen roar; cocoa-palms bowed with their feathery crests above a vegetation richly verdurous. The browns and yellows of the native villages, so rich in tone, so foreign of aspect, excited my unaccustomed vision. Graceful figures, warm and dusky of colouring, passed to and fro. The groves of broad leafed bananas; the group of white mission houses; the balmy, sensuous air; the transparent water, in which the very fish were strange in form and hue,—all things soever, land and water, sea and sky, seemed to cry aloud to my eager, wondering soul, " Hither, oh fortunate youth,