192 TEE CRUISE OF THE ' OUBAQOA.' 



On the northern shores of tlie Fiji Islands are extensive 

 tracts free from timber, and admirably adapted for pasture 

 lands. Large tracts have been already purchased for the 

 purpose of sheep farming, and the prospects of success are 

 encouraging. In many cases, however, the sheep, on arri- 

 ving from Australia, have suffered severely from the effects 

 of the long voyage. When acclimatised they do well. Dr. 

 Brewer, the U.S. consul, after an experience of four years' 

 sheep farming in Fiji, finds no sign of the wool degenerating 

 into hair. The average weight of the fleece is — merino, 

 three pounds ; Leicester, four pounds ; and it sells on the 

 ground at eightpence per pound unwashed. There are 

 in Fiji about 3,500 sheep and 70 head of horned cattle; 

 the latter succeed remarkably well. The flocks increase 

 rapidly, and good pasture land can be purchased at an 

 average rate of £2 per acre. In addition, the abundant 

 supply of water, and the fertility that everywhere charac- 

 terises the soil, offer advantages to the settlers in Fiji not 

 always to be found in the Australian colonies.^ 



* As this is passing through the press I find in a brief paper pnbhshed 

 in the November number of Fraser's Magazine for 18/1 (the writer of 

 which states that he has recently yisited Fiji), that the settlers on the 

 banks of the Rewa have come to the conclusion, that the sugar-cane 

 could be cultivated there to much greater advantage than cotton, and 

 are prepared to substitute the former as soon as they can obtain a 

 suiBciency of sugar-plants for that purpose ; the incessant rain that 

 falls being, it appears, as beneficial to the sugar-cane as it is unfavour- 

 able to the cotton plant. 



