In the evening the schooner made for the volcano, about three miles off.  It was a magnificent sight—­a perfect cone, the base of the mountain and all except the actual cone being under water.  The cone was apparently about 2,000 feet high, clouds hanging about it near the top, lurid and fiery, increasing the grandeur of the glow at the summit.  Every minute streams of fire, falling from the top or sides, rushed down the mount, so that for a space of perhaps half a mile in breadth the whole cone was always streaked, and sometimes covered with burning-masses of stones, cinders, &c.  Bumbling noises were heard only a few times.

’About 7 to 9 A.M. we sailed quite round the island, and saw there that the fiery appearance at night is not actually fire or flame, but caused by hot burning stones and masses of scoria, &c., constantly falling down the sides of the cone, which on the lee side are almost perpendicular.  On the weather side are cocoa-nut trees, and one small house, but we could see no people.  It was grand to see the great stones leaping and bounding down the sides of the cone, clearing 300 or 400 feet at a jump, and springing up many yards into the air, finally plunging into the sea with a roar, and the splash of the foam and steam combined.

This was on the 12th of August, and here is the ensuing note, how full now of significance, which it would be faithless to term melancholy:—­’We then went on to Nukapu, an island completely encircled by a coral reef.  The natives soon came off in canoes, and brought breadfruit and cocoa-nuts.  They spoke a few words of Maori, but wore their hair like the people of Santa Cruz, and resembled them in the character of their ornaments and in their general appearance.  They had bows and clubs of the same kind, tapa stained with turmeric, armlets, ear-rings and nose-rings of bone and tortoiseshell.’

Returning to Santa Cruz, a large supply of the produce was obtained by barter, but the people were still in such noisy crowds that nothing could be effected beyond these commercial transactions.

Tubua was the next ensuing island, a lovely spot within its encircling ring, over which the Bishop and Patteson waded, and found thirteen men on the beach.  Patteson went up to the first, tied a bit of red tape round his head, and made signs that he wanted a cocoa-nut in exchange for a fish-hook.  Plenty were forthcoming; but the Bishop, to his companion’s surprise, made a sudden sign to come away, and when the boat was regained he said:  ’I saw some young men running through the bush with bows and arrows, and these young gentry have not the sense to behave well like their parents.’