LETTER I. 
THE VOYAGE FROM MELBOURNE TO ANEITYUM, AND FIRST 
IMPRESSIONS OF THAT ISLAND. 
Aneltauhat Anettyum, 
May, 1872. 
Goo 
LLOW strange and how different is the scene before me now, 
from that which used to meet my eye, but one short month ago. 
Glancing from my open window I see the +tall stately palm 
and the luxuriant orange tree, instead of the familiar blue gum 
and wattle. I see the graceful savage strolling with an easy 
motion along the beach, instead of the well-dressed’ business 
man hurrying to town, or the eager men and women rushing 
towards the railway station. No discordant shrieks of impa- 
tient steam-engines are here to break the stillness of the morn- 
ing. No loud rattle of cars and carriages is heard ; but there 
floats towards me on the soft balmy airs of the tropics, the 
pleasant murmur of the surf on the outlying reef, and the faint 
shouts of the natives as they tumble about in the still waters of 
the bay. Everything is quietly beautiful and lazily pleasant. 
The sea, the wind, the trees, the natives, all seem infected by 
the same dreamy laziness, and I myself feel a strange desire to 
throw down my pen, to curl myself up in the shade of some 
great tree, and dream. 
But it will never do for me to land you in the tropics in 
this way, without the preliminary voyage down. So you must 
be satisfied, for the present, with this glimpse from my window 
