e garden. All was
still, the only sign of life being a light in a neighbouring hut, and
I sat out in the open air in comparative comfort, until driven indoors
again by torrents of rain, at about half-past two o'clock.

I plunged into bed again, taking several mosquitoes with me, which
hummed and buzzed and devoured us to their hearts' content till dawn.
Then I got up and walked down to the beach to bathe, and returned to
breakfast at six o'clock, refreshed but still disfigured.

It is now the depth of winter and the middle of the rainy season in
Tahiti; but, luckily for us, it is nearly always fine in the daytime.
At night, however, there is often a perfect deluge, which floods the
houses and gardens, turns the streams into torrents, but washes and
refreshes the vegetation, and leaves the landscape brighter and
greener than before.

At half-past seven the horses were put to, and we were just ready for
a start, when down came the rain again, more heavily than before. It
was some little time before it ceased enough to allow us to start,
driving along grassy roads and through forests, but progressing rather
slowly, owing to the soaked condition of the ground. If you can
imagine the Kew hot-houses magnified and multiplied to an indefinite
extent, and laid out as a gentleman's park, traversed by numerous
grassy roads fringed with cocoa-nut palms, and commanding occasional
glimpses of sea, and beach, and coral reefs, you will have some faint
idea of the scene through which our road lay.

Many rivers we crossed, and many we stuck in, the gentlemen having
more than once to take off their shoes and stockings, tuck up their
trousers, jump into the water, and literally put their shoulders to
the wheel. Sometimes we drove out into the shallow sea, till it seemed
doubtful when and where we should make the land again. Sometimes we
climbed up a solid road, blasted out of the face of the black cliffs,
or crept along the shore of the tranquil lagoon, frightening the
land-crabs into their holes as they felt the shake of the approaching
carriage. Palms and passiflora abounded, the latter being specially
magnificent. It seems wonderful how their thin steins can support, at
a height of thirty or forty feet from the ground, the masses of huge
orange-coloured fruit which depend in strings from their summits.

At the third river, not far from where it fell into the sea, we
thought it was time to lunch; so we stopped the carriage, gave the