Hall. — On ilio Island of Bapa. 81 



alttougli ono o£ our passengers told me he had been in bodily fear of them 

 all day, and Ms enjoyment bad thus been very unnecessarily marred. Eats 

 are very numerous. It is curious that when our coal ship iirst went there 

 they were troubled with mosquitoes, though none were found on shore. 

 They were, in fact, taken there in the ship, and have now disappeared. 

 There is an abundance of fish, some very beautiful, especially the parrot 

 and gold and silver fish ; good mullet and some other kinds are readily 

 procurable ; of sharks, plenty. 



The taro root, the chief support of the inhabitants, grows abundantly, 

 but requires attention to its culture, as it will not grow without plenty of 

 water. "We left a quantity of English vegetable seeds, and we hope they 

 will do well. Water-melons are plentiful and cheap ; bananas grovf well and 

 are very good ; oi-anges are produced, but of very poor quality ; pine-apples 

 also very inferior. The sugar-cane likewise grows well, and there were 

 cocoa-nuts formerly on the island, but a blight destroyed them all some 

 years ago. I could not ascertain if they throve well ; but I believe the 

 cocoa-nut tree is a great discerner of latitude, and will not flourish out 

 of the tropics. Our representative told me he was very successful with his 

 cabbages ; tolerably so with maize ; less so with his potatoes, doubtless owing, 

 as he said, " to his ignorance of gardening." 



Coal of a very inferior quality has been found in the interior : the natives 

 use it occasionally for cooking, &c., but it is useless for steam purposes. 



The land is generally covered with thick scrub and fern, showing here 

 and there clear spaces of a kind of coarse grass which grows five or six feet 

 high. There are a few beautiful flowering shrubs, and whilst the tree- and 

 smaller ferns abound, trees of tolerable size are found in the northern part 

 of the island, but only small ones near the harbour. The cultivation is 

 limited because the requirements are so small ; still, vegetation is most 

 luxuriant, and the soil appeared to me of the richest kind. True, the level 

 ground is comparatively of small extent, but there are many hundreds of 

 acres which might readily be cultivated. 



jReligion. — Captain McKellar, our representative there, in one of his 

 letters to me, says, " They are good Protestants, and firm haters of the 

 French, or the ' Wee-wees ' as they call them, and only await the arrival of 

 a British ship of war to surrender their island to England. However, the 

 Erench have been beforehand, and will stick to their protectorate, as they 

 term it, but which in plain English means taking what they like and com- 

 pelling the natives to work without paying for either. They have a king 

 and half a dozen chiefs, but with little authority — in short, they live like 

 one happy family, or did so before the Erench came." 



In the " Ruahine " we were at Eapa two days nearly — the second of 

 11 



