stoms of the Indian
people, of Benares and Hurdwar and Agra, were all so bright and clear as
to indicate the pencil of no ordinary artist. Miss Gordon Cumming next
betook herself to the Pacific, and spent two years "at Home in Fiji;"
two years which she utilized in the collection of much interesting
material. She was preparing in 1880 to return to England, when an
opportunity was offered to her of effecting that return in a manner
which could not but be delightful to a lady of adventurous disposition,
with a proper scorn for social "Mrs. Grundyism." A French man-of-war,
the _Seignelay_, which was carrying a Roman Catholic bishop on a cruise
round his oceanic diocese, arrived at Levaka, and its officers making
the acquaintance of Miss Cumming, courteously invited her to accompany
them on the remainder of their cruise. There was a delightful
originality in the invitation, and a no less delightful originality in
the acceptance of it. The French officers fitted up a pretty little
cabin for her accommodation, and without more ado she took up her
quarters on board the _Seignelay_, with no other escort or chaperonage
than that of the good bishop.

From Fiji the _Seignelay_ proceeded to Tonga, in the Friendly Islands,
where, in the usages of the population and in the insular antiquities,
Miss Cumming found much to interest her and her readers. As might be
expected, the old picturesqueness of the native life is fast
disappearing under the pressure of Western civilization, and we have
reason to be thankful to those travellers who do their best to catch its
waning features, and transfer them as faithfully as may be to the
printed page. The chief archaeological curiosities here are the tombs of
the old Tongan kings, cyclopean monuments built up of huge volcanic
blocks, which seem to have been brought from the Wallis group of islands
in open canoes, and erected on their present site with an immense
expenditure of human labour. Scarcely less remarkable is the great
solitary dolmen, which still exists intact, though of its origin nothing
is known, even in tradition. But that it marks the last resting-place of
some great chief or hero may be inferred from the fact that until within
the last few years an immense _Kana_ tent stood upon the transverse
capstone of the dolmen, and that feasts were celebrated on the spot. As
Miss Cumming reminds, similar celebrations take place in many parts of
Britain and Brittany "at the stones" to the pre