48 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
of our stay, and we enjoyed the evenings when supper was over 
and the day’s work done. I had brought along my flute and the 
Fijians made an appreciative audience, expressing their pleasure 
by a curious clicking sound. We shall never forget those wonder- 
ful moonlight nights with the rustling palm leaves showing their 
glistening silvery edges projected sharply against the sky, while 
the sheen of the moonlight path on the ocean danced and quivered 
with the ripples. The thunder of the surf, sounding like big guns 
at high tide, was reduced to little more than a deep murmur when 
the tide was low. When the moonlight nights passed we enjoyed 
the solemn splendor of the southern constellations in their nightly 
procession. The Southern Cross, high toward the zenith, seemed 
more brilliant than in the West Indies where we had considered 
it a much over-advertised attraction. Near it was the great black 
space or ‘‘hole in the sky’’ almost devoid of stars. 
More splendid than the moonlight or the glory of the star-lit 
heavens was the sunrise seen every morning as we took our dip 
before dressing. The scarlet reddening of the east as ‘‘the rosy- 
fingered daughter of the morn’’ appeared was soon illuminated 
by flecks and streamers of golden fire as the sun seemed almost 
to leap above the horizon. After that it behaved strangely, ac- 
cording to our Northern hemisphere ideas, for it rolled around 
to the north instead of the south towards its setting over the 
distant mountains of Vitilevu. 
During the night there was usually a strong and constant breeze 
through our sleeping rooms, and it was never uncomfortably 
warm. Sometimes a strong wind arose so that it was necessary 
to shut the doors and once or twice we had to adjust the heavy 
shutters to the windows. The island was very low with no por- 
tion of it more than twelve or fifteen feet above the water. On 
some occasions, we were told, it had been invaded by the sea dur- 
ing hurricanes at high tide, but evidently it had not been actually 
covered by water since the building of the quarantine station. 
We had provided ourselves with mosquito nets for our cots, but 
had no oceasion to use them here, although there were a few 
stray mosquitoes on one or two unusually quiet nights. The rain- 
fall is much less on Makuluva than on the mainland opposite, 
only a couple of miles away, and it rarely interfered with our 
work, although heavy storms could be seen over Vitilevu. 
One day when Dr. and Mrs. Stoner and I were in the middle 
of the messy work of sorting out a morning’s catch, and were all 
