These natives have great natural taste, which is displayed to a far greater degree in the arrangement and beautifying of their yam and taro gardens here, than in any other island I have seen.
The broad, handsome evergreen taro leaf spreads its verdure right and left, and all around, amid the friendship of the gay-leaved croton, the majestic dracæna, and the vari-coloured hibiscus, while here and there, to vary the prospect, the graceful cocoanut lends the beauty and elegance of its chastely spreading branches; all this beauty is thrown into relief by a back ground of the most marvellously beautiful bush, which shuts it in as with a natural fence, and leaves the only wish and feeling with the observer just to get for a moment a peep of what lies beyond. Breaks here and there however, in the background, revealed distant hills clad to their very summits with a richness and profusion of vegetation such as always abounds in these lovely islands where ‘every prospect pleases.’ I could select so many subjects for pictures here as almost to finish up all my dry plates, my only hope is that I may meet with some measure of success when by and bye I try my hand at photography. A header into the cool waters and a swim up and down stream was very refreshing. The boys enlivened the scene by their merriment and gambolling in the water, and altogether it was an occasion of much delight, and not the less so to me when I considered that all these people, almost without exception, had passed before through the healing waters of Holy Baptism. As possessing so much of the element, it is perhaps only natural that these people should love the water, and bathe a great deal more than their appearance would give one reason to suspect. The boys, and more especially, I think, the girls, are very fond of the water, and never seem tired of bathing when near the river-side. ‘Tanrig’ is distant about two miles from the river, and this distance, although inconvenient for many reasons, is very convenient for others, and especially because of the mosquitos which abound in the neighbourhood. Here some times they are bad enough, but by the water-side they are, I believe, unbearable. I know I find them troublesome enough there by day, and I don’t care to experience the worry and misery of them by night. They are called here ‘namu,’ and are said to be particularly troublesome at a certain period in the growth and maturity of the yam.