They spent the night at Ara, making a fire on the sandy beach, where they boiled their chocolate, and made gravy of some extract of meat to season their yam, and supped in public by firelight, reclining upon mats.  Afterwards they went up to the Ogamal, or barrack tent:  it was not an inviting bed-chamber, being so low that they could only kneel upright in it, and so smoky that Stephen remarked, ’We shall be cooked ourselves if we stay here,’ proving an advance in civilisation.  One of the private houses was equally unattractive, and the party slept on the beach.

The next morning they started to walk round the island:  taking two cork beds, a portmanteau and a basket of provisions; stopping wherever a few people were found, but it was a thinly peopled place, and the loss of the men carried off was sensibly felt.

One village had had a fight with a boat’s crew from Sydney.  They made no secret of it, saying that they would not have their men taken away; and they had been sharp enough to pour water into the guns before provoking the quarrel.

Further on there was a closer population, where the Bishop was enthusiastically welcomed, and an Ogamal was found, making a good shelter for the night.  Then they returned to Ara, where Mr. Atkin notes, in the very centre of the island, a curious rock, about 200 feet high, and on the top, 20 or 30 feet from the nearest visible soil, a she-oak stump, and two more green and flourishing a little below.  The rock was of black scoriae, too hot in the middle of the day to sit upon, and near it was a pool of water.  ’Such water, so rotten.’  The water used by the visitors had been brought from Auckland.  The natives do not trouble water much, I don’t think they ever drink it, and they certainly don’t look as if they ever washed.

On the following day they recrossed to Vanua Lava, where they spent a quiet calm Sunday in the vessel, landing in the afternoon to see Fisher Young’s grave, which they found well kept and covered with a pretty blue creeper.

The next Sunday they spent at Kohimarama:  beginning with Celebration at 7.30 A.M., and in the afternoon making the circuit of the island, about ten miles.  In one place Mr. Atkin bent over the edge of the natural sea wall, and saw the sea breaking 150 or 200 feet below!

After a fortnight spent in this manner, he and the other two clergymen carried off their Melanesians to Norfolk Island, leaving the Bishop to be fetched away in a month’s time.  Here is the letter written during his solitude:—­

’Kohimarama, Mota Island:  September 23, 1869.

’My dearest Joan and Fan,—­Here I am sitting in a most comfortable house in our new Kohimarama, for so the Melanesians determine to call our station in Mota.  The house is 48 feet by 18, with a 9-foot verandah on two sides.  It has one large room, a partition at each end, one of which is subdivided into two small sleeping rooms for George and his wife, and Charles and his wife.  There is no ceiling, so that we have the full advantage of the height of the house, and plenty of ventilation, as the space beyond where the roof comes down upon the wall plates is left open.