on fine nights-and the nights are always fine-we do congregate on the box of the unused wheel at the very stern, one of the ladies and the Irishman, high up on the top, reclining on a rug and leaning against the cushioned rail, like a king and queen of the May, and the whole crowd of us in all sorts of cool costumes sitting and lying round about below them, like picturesque vassals, the young New Zealanders sing "On the Ball" and "Good Old Mother"; the captain gives "Maxwelltoun Braes are Bonny" in a sweet tenor; the purser's Flying Dutchman" drowns the noise of the screw kicking out of the water; the second engineer, with the long black eyelashes, who, strange to say, happens not to be a Scotchman, puts his hand on his heart and insists again and again on having "Sweet Marie,” which our young lady sings nicely and simply, and we all strike in at the chorus, tenor and bass going pretty well anyhow, but quite satisfactory to everyone, so long as they are loud enough. Mem.-We have left Beethoven and Mendelssohn and all those classical gentlemen behind on this trip, and get on capitally without them. "Goodbye, Ting-a-Ling," I hear a sweet voice say to our banjo-player as the steamer sounds her last whistle on leaving Papeëte; and it appears to me that there are soft vibrations in the way the improvised nickname is pronounced! But again I anticipate.

Then we have two colonial illustrated newspaper photographers— enthusiastic and clever artists-later on at every island the first men ashore, where they "get up" picturesque groupings of natives and fly around, perspiring under the hot sun, in despairing effort. to place effective niggers up trees, or perch them on rocks, and perhaps bring to the foreground some remarkable-looking shy fellow in a straw hat fifteen inches high, or baby, or pretty girl, or very stout dame, and to get in a nice bit of tree with a peep of sky in it, and to arrange colours, lights, shades, attitudes, and get their mobile subjects to stand still and stare at a given point and "show their teeth if they like"; and the other eager spectators, who crowd round and peep under the mysterious black cloth on three legs that is to do such wonders, to "Keep heads out of the road just for one minute; now!" When When imprisoned at sea these two enthusiasts spend hours trying to catch, in a proper light, the break of a great storm-driven wave, or, perchance, they rig up on deck a dead flying-fish and "fake" him up into "a jolly good picture" flying fast over the sea, with that breaking billow and a sky cunningly fitted in; or they take a snap-shot at our solitary albatross, or at "Billy," the ship's dog, hauling a rope with his teeth, his legs firmly set, doing his share like a man among the sailors

to get the yard round. As for sunrises and sunsets, our artists watch for them like cats, but in the main, I fear, suffer much disappointment, the cloud effects being very inferior to those in the Indian Ocean and nearer the equator.

Next on our passenger list comes an old Ceylon coffee planter, who, after turning his hand to store-keeping and farming and many other things in New Zealand for a dozen years, hankers after his old tropical life, and is going out to spy the land at Rarotonga— a splendid island for coffee-growing.1

Also we have the representative of an Auckland trading firm, a young man-all colonial commercial travellers are now preferred young-who has been all his life among "the islands," and understands sugar, coffee, oranges, copra, and “ niggers." The rest of our passengers are exclusively on pleasure bent. One New Zealander takes a sudden fancy when we are a week afloat, and comes to breakfast clean-shaved, and nobody knows him. He might have played it low down on us as a stowaway. From a jolly-looking squatter, with a rough roundabout beard, when he is at home a quiet fellow, fond of his local club, his pipe, and his cattle, and taking a great interest in the road board, in chaff-cutting and thrashing machinery, he has transformed himself into a long-visaged, melancholy Henry Irving. This is rather hard on me, as it leaves me the only man with a beard and bald head to be mistaken by confiding natives for a missionary, and, generally, to bear the odium theologicum on inconvenient occasions. In vain do I afterwards give my big straw hat a fierce all-round cock. That only confirms the opinion of my brown friends, male and female!

Arrived at the islands, we take on board, besides a Frenchman or two, a few Kanakas travelling from one island to another; but we get nothing like the big companies of jolly native tourists met with on the other line. Indeed, compared to Tongans, Samoans, or even Fijians, the general expression and manner of the Tahitian Maoris may be summed up in one word-sadness. It shows in their songs and choruses and their cries of joy, which are more like wails, as well as in their faces. A mother, folding a loved infant in her arms, after a long separation, will break out into piercing, heartrending cries of joy. The jolly rollicking dance of the Tongan is absent. Tahitian dances are athletic and saltatory, as well as sedentary, of course, but in a matter-of-fact, painstaking way of studying perfection.

1 The crop of 1896, at Rarotonga, is a partial failure, not exceeding fifty tons. The methods of growing and drying coffee are very rude and unskilled as yet.

As for the Frenchman here, he travels at sea as little as possible, and only on business; he does not look on a sea voyage as a pleasure in itself. The only beautiful journey to him is the one that leads back to Marseilles and Paris. He dislikes all "work." I was amused at one gentleman, who lamented his poverty and inability to send a talented son to the School of Art in Paris, instead of putting him into a Government bureau at Papeëte. The life of a settler, clearing and planting, and producing something-a life which would be a joy to an adventurous Englishman-never occurred to him as suitable for his son. If it had, the idea would only have caused him a shudder of horror.

RAROTONGA.

This service by the Union Steam Shipping Company, steaming 1620 miles from New Zealand without seeing a speck of land or (in our case) a ship, or a bird, except one solitary albatross-far out of its usual course, far away from the boisterous cold south, like its famous predecessor whom the Ancient Mariner saw-to strike at the end of seven days an insignificant little protectorate fiftythree miles in circumference, is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable evidences of New Zealand maritime enterprise, and shows that the little "Britain of the South" is a worthy child of Britannia and Father Neptune, and alive to the destiny of her geographical position as mistress of the South Pacific.

Rarotonga, when first descried in the far distance, thirty or forty miles off, rises a razor-backed, jagged rock right out of the vast ocean. It is the principal of the ten islands of the Cook Group, Mangaia and Aitutaki being next in importance. As we approach the reef that runs all round the island and guards it from the sea, the distant rugged beauty is transformed into closer green tints of vegetation, masses of cocoanut and pandanus trees, and thick foliage of manycoloured shrubs. From the shore, which is lapped by the gentle lagoon waves, coral bound, and rarely-not more than once in seven years-disturbed by hurricane or storm, the rich verdure stretches half way up the precipitous mountain cliffs and peaks that tower over us. Viewed from the steamer a mile off the slight irregularities of height are imperceptible, and the mountain appears covered with a wonderful close mantle of shot-green velvet pile. Skirting this scene, where native huts of white coral, thatched with dark brown leaves, picturesquely peep out among the trees, our steamer approaches the sheltered north. There, inside a reef, in a bay too shallow and small for us to enter-though a lesser steamer of the same line

has ventured in—is the principal town or village of Avatu. We reach it by boat, landing on a solid and business-like jetty, with a tram-line running all along it to carry the stores up, and the fruit and copra down.

Here are assembled to see us land all the élite and fashion of the island, tall, handsome Maori men and women, smiling and joyous, rather darker than Tahitians, more the colour of the Sicilians of Syracuse; while under the sheds that adjoin the wharf others are busy papering oranges with the contents of old Blue-books, the best use I know for such documents, and packing into cases the rich fruit scattered about in kits, as it is emptied out of the light vans and handcarts which stand grouped around.

Avatui and Avarua, which join and form really one village, are modernized, and few of the houses are built in purely native fashion. In a few years there will be not a real native tree-hut left, except, perhaps, one carefully preserved in a museum, with a group of wax figures in front, to show the old style of life. The coral houses will, however, last a very long time, unless pulled down. Here are American nails, European doors, puttied glass window-panes, wooden walls, galvanized iron roofs crushing out of existence and swallowing up, as it were, native thatches and lashings, open doorways, and quaint old verandahs.

Along the roads one is struck by the number of American buggies drawn by small, native entire horses, and sometimes by mules. Also here one is struck by the number of queens. We positively get tired at last of calling on them, for there are four, and it takes only four hours to drive right round the island. A queen per hour! We were quite fresh, however, for Queen Makea Takau of Avarua, the Ariki or head chieftainess of Rarotonga, and the elected permanent chief of the Executive of the Cook Federal Parliament; while her husband is only a common member of the Rarotonga Local Legislature, a sort of village board, with no executive powers or important duties! Of course, the first thing the ladies did on landing was to call on her, and the men rather reluctantly and nervously followed, up the long green lawn, shaded by tropical trees, to the palace-a very respectable wooden verandahed house. We lost our nervousness, however, without exactly recovering our composure on seeing the maids of honour, headed by "Jackey," stealing on all-fours up the passage, and keeking round the corner to get an unseen glimpse of the new comers. Jackey is very nice-looking. I regret to say she is "no better than she should be"; but that mysterious formula does not accurately describe her condition. It

would be more correct to say that she is a little-not much—worse than the maids of honour of the time of King Charles II. of England; but that is not Queen Makea's fault-not, indeed, her husband's. They do their best to bring Jackey up strictly. It is the fault of surroundings, and, perhaps, of a frolicsome nature.

It is hardly right, however, to bring in the Queen's husband's name at all in the matter. A Rarotongan queen's husband is a perfect nobody. I do not know that I can compare him more accurately than to the drone attendant on a queen bee. The natives call him, sometimes, the "fifth wheel of the coach." Even Jackey would not feel much flattered by his attentions. Still, these queens in esse and queens in posse are rather particular about husbands. Once upon a time a Rarotongan future queen, when a young girl, just as if she had been a character in Annie Swan's and any other namby-pamby story book, fell in love with her present husband, an Englishman. The parents, as usual, when daughters startle them by choosing the wrong man, were averse to the match, and locked, or rather, I should say, more correctly, there being no locks handy, lashed the young lady in her room. She, however, got out, I presume by a ladder of cocoanut rope, and fell into her lover's arms. He bore her straight away to his catamaran, and set off paddling with all his might on the open sea to Aitutaki, a hundred miles off. Imagine the excitement of the Queen and her subjects when they saw the heiress-apparent braving the main with her lover. Picture to yourself the launching of canoes, and the shouts and cries of the warriors who manned a whole fleet in pursuit. The runaway couple, having a good start, got ashore first, made a bee-line for the missionary's house, and were about to be spliced when the King and Queen and the whole army rushed up and demanded that the proceedings be stopped. But the young princess was firm. She declined to leave her man, married or not married, and the natives of the island took her part. The royal parents had to give way, and like wise people did the inevitable with a good grace.

"If you are determined to have him you had better come home and be married in proper princessly style, not like a common Kanaka, without any ceremony," said the old Queen.

So the young Queen returned to Rarotonga, and was married in great state, taking days over it.

She is an old lady now, weighing about seventeen stone, and as she and I sit on our heels on her verandah smoking cigarettes, while she and two maids of honour, all in their bare feet, are making a patchwork quilt, I take a long look at her fat, smiling face and