’We are going on with divers works, but not very vigorously just now.  We are sawing the timber for our large hall:  the building still to be put up, and then our arrangements will be complete for the present.

’Then our fencing goes on.  We have one large field of some ninety or one hundred acres enclosed, the sea and a stream bounding two sides, and two other fields of about forty and twenty acres.  I have good cart mares and one cart horse, a riding mare which I bought of Mr. Pritt, and Atkin has one also, eleven cows, and as many calves, poultry (sadly destroyed by wild cats) and pigs, and two breeding sows, and a flock of fifty well-bred sheep imported.  These cost me £4. 10s. a head; I hope they are the progenitors of a fine flock.  The ram cost £12.  We have plenty of work, and must go on fencing and subdividing our fields.  Most of the land is wooded; but a considerable quantity can easily be cleared.  Indeed 200 or 300 acres are clear now of all but some smaller stuff that can easily be removed.  A thick couch-grass covers all.  It is not so nutritious as the ordinary English grasses; but cattle, sheep, and horses like it, only a larger quantity is needed by each animal.  It gives trouble when one wants to break it up, it is such a network of roots; but once out of the ground and the soil clear, and it will grow anything.  Our crops of sweet potatoes are excellent.  The ordinary potato does very well too; and maize, vegetables of all sorts, many fruit trees, all the semi-tropical things, capitally; guavas by the thousand, and very soon I hope oranges; lemons now by thousands, melons almost a weed, bananas abundant; by-and-by coffee, sugar-cane, pineapples (these last but small), arrowroot of excellent quality.  Violets from my bed, and mignonette from Palmer’s, scent my room at this minute.  The gardeners, Codrington, Palmer, and Atkin, are so kind in making me tidy, devising little arrangements for my little plot of ground, and my comfort and pleasure generally.  Well, that is a nice little chat with you.  Now it is past 8 P.M., and the mutton broth for Clement and Mary is come.  I must feed my chicks.  Excellent patients they are, as good as can be.  They don’t make the fuss that I did in my low fever when I was so savage with your doves that would go on cooing at my window, don’t you remember?

’My dear Bishop will be touched by the confidence in him shown by his late Diocesan Synod in entrusting to him the nomination of his successor.  It was clearly the right thing to do.  As for me, no one who knows anything about it or me would dream of removing me from Melanesia, as long as I have health and strength, and still less of putting me into another diocese.  When I break down, or give up, it will not be to hold any other office, as I think.