sable chin with a razor made for sale or barter but never meant for shaving, much less for dry shaving! The sight was a most ludicrous one -our friend scraping away for very life in an awful funk, and the natives one after another submitting patiently to the ordeal with tears running down their cheeks, and streams of blood flowing from their lacerated chins. By way of serving him out for having many a time cut us all out in the way of bargaining for curious clubs, &c., we pushed off again into deep water, leaving him to his fate and his barbarous employment! We did not listen to his entreaties to be taken away, till he had gone over at least a dozen chins. During the time we stayed we were treated with the greatest kindness, and on leaving the island brought away with us two smart boys of 12 and 16 years of age for the Bishop of New Zealand. At that time his lordship used to spend the winter months in cruising amongst these islands, returning boys from his school at Auckland, and obtaining others for a year's training in their place. By this means he had acquired the confidence of the savages, and had obtained a most extraordinary influence over them. When our interpreter explained to the ferocious-looking chiefs that we would undertake to deliver their sons and heirs to the good Bishop, they sent them at once. Their wardrobe was not a very extensive one, and they required no preparation in the way of packing, but stepped into the boat as they were, in puris naturalibus. They were soon rigged out on board, in a few weeks were taught to make their own clothes, and long before we had an opportunity of falling in with the Bishop's schooner, had become expert sailors. On the 1st of September we ran over to Fati, or Vate, commonly called Sandwich Island, and anchored in Havannah Harbour. One object we had in visiting this island was to return a boy, the son of a chief, whom Captain Oliver, of the Fly, had brought away to Sydney the year before. There were great rejoicings on his return, and his old father loaded us with presents of pigs, vegetables, such as yams, taro, &c., and fruits of various kinds. On the 8th we sailed for Malicolo, and anchored in Port Sandwich for the afternoon. Several of us landed, and after inspecting their curious images in the village near the landingplace, started off into the interior along a native track, but were with difficulty allowed pass a chief who was coming down attended by two of his harem. However, we embarked without an accident. Shortly afterwards the Bishop of New Zealand put in here, and to landed with his chronometer to get a set of sights. The natives could not understand what he was after, and drove him into the sea, his lordship having to swim for his life, and spoiling his chronometer. Nothing daunted he put in here again the following year, and landed on the beach amidst the assembled natives. They must have heard something of him in the meantime, for they now received him with open arms, and carried him in procession on their shoulders to their main village. After skirting along Espiritu Santo we arrived on the 13th at Vanikolo, one of the Queen Charlotte group, and anchored at the very place where La Perouse lost his two vessels in 1788, as was most satisfactorily ascertained by Dillon, in the Research, in 1826, who discovered, and sent to France, numerous relics of the unfortunate navigator and his ships, for which he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. We saw very little of the natives, who lived in the interior of the island. They were the first betel-nut chewers we had fallen in with. We left on the 16th, and on the 18th and 19th ran along the south side of San Christoval, in the Solomon group, and on the evening of the 21st anchored in a hitherto undiscovered harbour inside the Island of Malata, to which we gave the name of Port Adam. On landing, we found the village deserted, evidently having been abandoned in great haste. We remained here a few days, but saw nothing of the natives till we were leaving the harbour, when we espied them making their way in their canoes from various distant points to the village near which we anchored. Whilst we were running along San Christoval, between Mount Toro and Malo Bay, we were surrounded with canoes full of natives, with whom we spent the greater part of a day bartering. When it was getting time to make sail again, we explained to the natives on board that they must leave the ship. They all did so except one, a fine young lad of seventeen or eighteen, who ran up into the main-top, and refused to return to his canoe. We explained to him that we should probably never return to his island, and that if he went away with us, he might never be able to revisit his friends and native island. Still he would go and did go, intimating that he would moi moi (sleep) in the ship. The men contributed various articles of clothing, and in a few minutes his kit was complete, and he was quite at home, becoming a sailor at once instinctively. He could go aloft, reef, &c., with the best of them. Six months afterwards we fell in with the Bishop of New Zealand, and handed over our new friend to him, much against his will. A year after wards the writer of this article fell in with him again, when the Bishop looked in at Sydney on his way North with his freight of black pupils. I asked the Bishop to allow me to take Mesty on shore with me for the night, and then learnt something of his previous history. By this time he could speak English accurately, and could write and read well. On asking him why he had insisted upon leaving home, he burst out laughing and told me that his big brother, who was the chief of that part of the island, had "licked" him the morning we visited the place, and so he determined to run away and leave him. He told me that on his return his friends would look upon him as a much greater man than his brother, in consequence of his travels in distant countries, and he was not in the least afraid to return. He became one of the Bishop's most useful pioneers, and I hope has never regretted the step he took in resenting his brother's beating. A few words respecting the fauna, &c., of the islands, as well as the dress, manners, and customs of the natives, will conclude this chapter. In New Zealand and the other islands referred to, there is not a single venomous reptile of any kind whatever, the only indigenous animal being a small Kangaroo rat. The famous Aracauria-the Kauri of New Zealand-we found in New Caledonia and Vanikolo. In spite of the volcanic formation of the islands, they are covered with a dense vegetation, a great variety and profusion of ferns, and magnificent forest trees of various kinds. They are well within the Tropics, lying between latitudes 9° and 20° 30' south. In New Caledonia, latitude 20° to 24° south, the gum-tree of Australia flourishes to a great extent. The dress throughout the islands varies but little, a broad or narrow band across the loins making all the difference, where there is a dress at all. In the New Hebrides it is impossible to describe it, the attempt to make a decent appearance in society being the most ludicrous thing ever witnessed. In Fati, the women wear a broad belt of matting, made from the inner rind of some tree, with some little attempt at ornament in the pattern; but they have besides a most curious tail-like appendage behind, which has a very odd appearance when seen as they are scudding away from the sight of a stranger. The women here have their hair cropped quite close-the men dress theirs in all sorts of fantastic shapes, and wear it long and frizzy. Their lands are well and artistically culti-❘ vated, irrigation being practised to a considerable extent. They grow yams, cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, bananas, taro, bread-fruit, pumpkins, melons, and even here and there Indian wheat. In the New Hebrides the natives worship oblong stones, from six to eighteen inches in length, in each of which they suppose a divinity, or demon, resides, which they call a Natmas. There is a chip off one end of the stone by which the Natmas effects an entrance. The chief of the tribe is the priest, whose duty it is to propitiate the Natmas, who is of course a malignant being. The head Natmas (answering to our Satan) is called Neijeroon. In Malicolo we found large images, made of a kind of cloth, and stuffed with some elastic substance-each in form like a well-shaped man, and painted like a mummy. All the islanders have traditions of the deluge, &c. For instance, the people of Aneiteum believe that their own particular island was fished up out of the ocean by one of their deities, who made a man and woman, from whom they were descended, and that in consequence of the growing wickedness of the people in after ages, a flood came and drowned all except a man and his wife, who were saved in a canoe. J. M. A CORNER OF ESSEX REVISITED. WITHOUT feeling, like Mr. Kingsley, an enthusiasm in east winds, or being their encomiast, we admit that there are a few weeks in the height of summer when the Eastern Coast of England, with its breeze from the German Ocean, is desirable and invigorating. Scarborough, Whitby, Cromer, Lowestoft, and several minor places, become filled, for a time, with guests quite to the extent of their accommodation. And spots nearer London,-Felixstow and Aldburghe (or Aldbro') in Suffolk ; Walton-on-the-Naze and Dovercourt, in Essex, procure as many visitors as the supply of meat and milk is capable of victualling, and as make them "without o'erflowing full." The lastnamed place has an attraction for the pater and mater familias whose household is large and whose offspring small, in the easiness of its access from the metropolis. The old Eastern Counties Railway has changed its name, as a snake casts its skin, and hopes, under the title The The Dovercourt known to sea bathers is a small collection of new houses, so situated that it occupies a headland within a bay, the northern horn of which is Landguard Point and Fort, in Suffolk; the southern is the Naze, in Essex, the distance between the extremities being about ten miles in a straight line. united estuaries of the rivers Stour and Orwell, forming Harwich harbour to the north, and the trend of the bay to the south, isolate the little borough and its watering-place on three sides; and Dovercourt, being seated on a small elevation, produce to it a combination of sea, inland waters, shipping, wood, and human habitations, which is certainly very beautiful. At a bathing-place the first object of visitors is health; the second, is generally amusement, -the latter often materially conducing to the main design. If subjects of interest are sought for in this neighbourhood they will assuredly be found, as they are to be discovered in every part of our land in which an intelligent person may locate himself. Independent of natural beauties, our country, being small and having a history, there is scarcely a corner that is not eventful, hung about with traditions, preserving memorials of wood and stone, or lingering names which are relics as imperishable as those more material objects. What Gilbert White did at Selbourne, each inquiring resident may do in his own village; and the casual visitor may do the same wherever he casts himself down, without fear of finding any locality utterly barren. The corner of East Anglia we have selected is perhaps more fruitful than some other places. The geologist will find fossils in the low cliff and in the coprolite beds in the neighbourhood. He will find tusks of elephants in the great estuary of the two rivers, and need not ascribe them now, as was formerly done, to the remains of elephants which the Emperor Claudius brought with him to England, because Essex has shown itself in its drift rich in these bones, which have been already described in ONCE A WEEK.* See Vol. 111., p. 53. He may |