LVIN,--I got back on Monday night, after twenty-three hours in
an open boat; the keys were lost; the consul (who had promised us a
bottle of Burgundy) nobly broke open his storeroom, and we got to bed
about midnight. Next morning the blessed consul promised us horses for
the daybreak; forgot all about it, worthy man; set us off at last in the
heat of the day, and by a short cut which caused infinite trouble, and
we were not home till dinner. I was extenuated, and have had a high
fever since, or should have been writing before. To-day for the first
time, I risk it. Tuesday I was pretty bad; Wednesday had a fever to kill
a horse; Thursday I was better, but still out of ability to do aught but
read awful trash. This is the time one misses civilisation; I wished to
send out for some police novels; Montepin would have about suited my
frozen brain. It is a bother when all one's thought turns on one's work
in some sense or other; I could not even think yesterday; I took to
inventing dishes by way of entertainment. Yesterday, while I lay asleep
in the afternoon, a very lucky thing happened; the Chief Justice came to
call; met one of our employes on the road; and was shown what I had done
to the road.

"Is this the road across the island?" he asked.

"The only one," said Innes.

"And has one man done all this?"

"Three times," said the trusty Innes. "It has had to be made three
times, and when Mr. Stevenson came, it was a track like what you see
beyond."

"This must be put right," said the Chief Justice.

_Sunday._--The truth is, I broke down yesterday almost as soon as I
began, and have been surreptitiously finishing the entry to-day. For all
that I was much better, ate all the time, and had no fever. The day was
otherwise uneventful. I am reminded; I had another visitor on Friday;
and Fanny and Lloyd, as they returned from a forest raid, met in our
desert, untrodden road, first Father Didier, Keeper of the conscience of
Mataafa, the rising star; and next the Chief Justice, sole stay of
Laupepa, the present and unsteady star, and remember, a few days before
we were close to the sick bed and entertained by the amateur physician
of Tamasese, the late and sunken star. "That is the fun of this place,"
observed Lloyd; "everybody you meet is so important." Everybody is also
so gloomy. It will come to war again, is the opinion of all the well
informed--and before that to many bankruptcies; and after that, as
usual, to famine. H