school here, and fifty-one Melanesian men, women, and young lads are now with us, gathered from twenty-four islands, exclusive of the islands so long-known to us of the Loyalty Group.  When you remember that at Santa Cruz, e.g., we had never landed before, and that this voyage I was permitted to go ashore at seven different places in one day, during which I saw about 1,200 men:  that in all these islands the inhabitants are, to look at, wild, naked, armed with spears and clubs, or bows and poisoned arrows; that every man’s hand (as, alas! we find only too soon when we live among them) is against his neighbour, and scenes of violence and bloodshed amongst themselves of frequent occurrence; and that throughout this voyage (during which I landed between seventy and eighty times) not one hand was lifted up against me, not one sign of ill-will exhibited; you will see why I speak and think with real amazement and thankfulness of a voyage accompanied with results so wholly unexpected.  I say results, for the effecting a safe landing on an island, and much more the receiving a native lad from it, is, in this sense, a result, that the great step has been made of commencing an acquaintance with the people.  If I live to make another voyage, I shall no longer go ashore there as a stranger.  I know the names of some of the men; I can by signs remind them of some little present made, some little occurrence which took place; we have already something in common, and as far as they know me at all, they know me as a friend.  Then some lad is given up to us, the language learned, and a real hold on the island obtained.

’The most distant point we reached was the large island Ysabel, in the Solomon Archipelago.  From this island a lad has come away with us, and we have also a native boy from an island not many miles distant from Ysabel, called Anudha, but marked in the charts (though not correctly) as Florida.

’It would weary you if I wrote of all the numerous adventures and strange scenes which in such a voyage we of course experience.  I will give you, if I can, an idea of what took place at some few islands, to illustrate the general character of the voyage.

’One of the New Hebrides Islands, near the middle of the group, was discovered by Cook, and by him called “Three Hills.”  The central part of it, where we have long-had an acquaintance with the natives, is called by them “Mai.”  Some six years ago we landed there, and two young men came away with us, and spent the summer in New Zealand.  Their names were Petere and Laure; the former was a local chief of some consequence.  We took a peculiar interest in this island, finding that a portion of the population consists of a tribe speaking a dialect of the great Polynesian language of which another dialect is spoken in New Zealand.  Every year we have had scholars from Mai, several of whom can read and write.  We have landed there times without number, slept ashore three or four times, and are well known of course to the inhabitants.