DEPARTURE FROM FIJI. 413 



Wesleyan training-master, also owns large tracts and a 

 great many small islands. The land is paid for in 

 barter, cotton prints, cutlery, muskets, powder and shot. 

 Parties desirous of establishing plantations will have no 

 difficulty in obtaining any amount of good land near 

 rivers or the sea. Labour can be had to some extent in 

 Fiji, but Polynesians will work much better if they are 

 not in their own islands ; and hands might be had by 

 running over to Rotuma, Foturia, Were, Earatonga, and 

 the New Hebrides ; indeed some of the best working 

 men and women I saw in Fiji were obtained from those 

 sources. 



On the 2nd of November we returned to Lado, from 

 our voyage around Vanua Levu. We had left Nuku- 

 bati on the 30th of October, and called at Solevu and 

 Levuka. On the 7th of November the 'Staghound,' 

 Captain Sustenance, arrived from Tahiti and Samoa, 

 and, as I had seen as much of Fiji as was accessible 

 and gathered all the information I had been directed 

 to accumulate, I engaged a passage in her for Sydney. 

 There were several passengers on board ; two having 

 come from Tonga, where they had established sheep- 

 runs; and one had been over a great part of Fiji, to 

 j udge for himself about the capabilities of the group for 

 colonization. From what I could gather from conversa- 

 tion, he had been sent out by a party of friends, all of 

 whom were desirous of investing capital in the islands 

 if his report should prove favourable. He spoke in 

 high terms of the country, and its resources. 



I left Levuka on the 16th of November, and two days 

 after lost sight of Kadavu and the Fiji group. On the 



