216 A MISSION TO VITI. 
at its foot, near the town of Nasau, ascertained by 
Colonel Smythe to be 144° Fahrenheit, may possibly 
stand in some connection with its former activity. The 
outward look of the summit is very much like the cone 
of Vesuvius, as it was when I ascended it in 1861; but 
we did not discover any large crater, simply an insigni- 
ficant swamp. 
Having left on one of the trees a well-corked bottle 
containing the record of our visit,—that of the first 
white men who ever ascended the mountain,—we com- 
menced the descent, which presented in some parts se- 
rious difficulties, but, thanks to our rope, we overcame 
them all; only one of the lads had a rather serious 
tumble, by which he sprained his ankle. Before we 
were more than halfway down it was completely dark, 
when the natives lit bundles of reeds and the stems of 
a weed (Erigeron albidum, A. Gray), both of which 
make excellent torches. On arriving at the first grove 
of cocoa-nut palms a general halt was made, and heaps 
of nuts were brought down from the trees and emp- 
tied of their contents with astonishing rapidity. It was 
past nine o’clock, just twelve hours after we started, 
when we reached Taulalia, where the whole village was 
assembled at and about the house of the Wesleyan 
teacher, a Fijian by birth, and our native companions 
had to give a most circumstantial account of our day’s 
proceedings. 
We slept at the house of the teacher, which we found 
clean and comfortable. Early next morning all who had 
accompanied us had to sit in a row,—and a nice long row 
it was,—and every one received a butcher’s knife, which 
