Havannah Harbour. 113 
is being prepared for planting next season. The manager is 
speaking of trying coffee also, of the success of which he 
has little doubt. 
The business done by this establishment—without doubt the 
most important in the group—consists of importing and selling 
goods of every description, including grog, to vessels and 
traders, growing cotton, and also buying it from other growers ; 
ginning and exporting it to Sydney; making and buying cobra. 
and arrowroot, and also dealing occasionally in beche de mer 
and candlenut berries. Of all these industries carried on in 
the New Hebrides, I shall speak in another letter. 
For the purpose of carrying on this business, there is the 
manager, two overseers, engineer, and twenty or thirty natives, as 
well as the ‘ Defiance,”’—a schooner of 200 tons, which runs 
between Sydney and Efaté,— and a ketch for inter-island 
work. 
We only stayed a day inthis harbour ; sufficiently long, how- 
ever, for the missionaries to decide that it afforded a good 
opening for a mission station, and to fix upon a suitable spot 
whereon to place it. 
Next we sailed to Nguna, a small island with rather an un- 
pronounceable name, only ten miles to the north of Efaté. 
While going there we had rather a narrow escape from being 
lodged on the top of a reef. Not long after we left the har- 
bour it began to get dark, and the captain resolved that instead 
of knocking about off Nguna all night, he would come to anchor 
somewhere, so ran for a sandy beach in the lee of Deception - 
Island. That island is well named; for we ran on until 
the vessel was almost on shore before the man with the lead 
could find any bottom. Suddenly he shouted ‘fourteen fathoms,’ 
then next heave ‘four fathoms,’ next came shrilly the cry, 
3 
