’Yesterday we made some sago.  A tree is cut down in its proper stage of growth, just when it begins to flower.  The pith is pulled and torn into shreds and fibres, then the juice is squeezed out so as to allow it to run or drip into some vessel, while water is poured on the pith by some one assisting the performer.  The grounds (as say of coffee) remain at the bottom when the water is poured off, and an hour of such a sun as we had yesterday dries and hardens the sago.  It is then fit for use.  I suppose that it took an hour and a half to prepare about a slop-basin full of the dried hard sago.  I have not used it vet.  We brought tapioca here some years ago, and they used it in the same way, and they had abundance of arrow-root.  On Monday I will make some, if all is well.  Any fellow is willing to help for a few beads or fish-hooks, and they do all the heavy work, the fetching water, &c.

’I never saw anything like the pigeons in the great banyan tree close by.  They eat its berries, and I really think there are at times more than a hundred at once in it.  Had I a gun here I think I might have brought down three or four at a shot yesterday, sitting shot of course, but then I should shoot “for the pot.”  Palmer had his gun here last year, and shot as many as he wanted at any time.  The bats at night are innumerable; they too eat the banyan berries, but chiefly the ripening bread-fruit.  The cats we brought here have nearly cleared the place of the small rats which used to abound here; but lizards abound in this hut, because it is not continually smoke-dried.

’Last night I think some of the people here heard some rather new notions, to them, about the true relation of man and woman, parent and child, &c.  They said, as they do often say, “Every word is true! how foolish we are!” But how to get any of them to start on a new course is the question.

’Ascension Day, May 30th.—­There is a good deal of discussion going on now among the people.  I hear of it not only from our old scholars, but from some of the men.  I have been speaking day by day more earnestly to the people; always reading here and there verses of the Gospels or the Acts, or paraphrasing some passage so that they may have the actual words in which the message is recorded.  They say, “This is a heavy, a weighty word,” and they are talking, as they say, night after night about it.  Some few, and they elderly men, say, “Let us talk only about our customs here.”  Others say, “No, no; let us try to think out the meaning of what he said.”  A few come and ask me questions, only a few, not many are in earnest, and all are shy.  Many every night meet in Robert Pantatun’s house, twenty-five or thirty, and ask him all manner of questions, and he reads a little.  They end with prayer.

’They have many strange customs and superstitious observances peculiar to this group.  They have curious clubs, confraternities with secret rites of initiation.  The candidate for admission pays pigs and native money, and after many days’ seclusion in a secret place is, with great ceremony, recognised as a member.  No woman and none of the uninitiated may know anything of these things.