_Silent Falls._
3. _Old Walls._ 7. _Garden._
4. _Wreck Hill._]

I have been exploring up the Vaituluiga; see your map. It comes down a
wonderful fine glen; at least 200 feet of cliffs on either hand, winding
like a corkscrew, great forest trees filling it. At the top there ought
to be a fine double fall; but the stream evades it by a fault and
passes underground. Above the fall it runs (at this season) full and
very gaily in a shallow valley, some hundred yards before the head of
the glen. Its course is seen full of grasses, like a flooded meadow;
that is the sink! beyond the grave of the grasses, the bed lies dry.
Near this upper part there is a great show of ruinous pig-walls; a
village must have stood near by.

To walk from our house to Wreck Hill (when the path is buried in fallen
trees) takes one about half an hour, I think; to return, not more than
twenty minutes; I dare say fifteen. Hence I should guess it was
three-quarters of a mile. I had meant to join on my explorations passing
eastward by the sink; but, Lord! how it rains.

_Later._--I went out this morning with a pocket compass and walked in a
varying direction, perhaps on an average S. by W., 1754 paces. Then I
struck into the bush, N.W. by N., hoping to strike the Vaituluiga above
the falls. Now I have it plotted out I see I should have gone W. or even
W. by S.; but it is not easy to guess. For 600 weary paces I struggled
through the bush, and then came on the stream below the gorge, where it
was comparatively easy to get down to it. In the place where I struck
it, it made cascades about a little isle, and was running about N.E., 20
to 30 feet wide, as deep as to my knee, and piercing cold. I tried to
follow it down, and keep the run of its direction and my paces; but when
I was wading to the knees and the waist in mud, poison brush, and rotted
wood, bound hand and foot in lianas, shovelled unceremoniously off the
one shore and driven to try my luck upon the other--I saw I should have
hard enough work to get my body down, if my mind rested. It was a
damnable walk; certainly not half a mile as the crow flies, but a real
bucketer for hardship. Once I had to pass the stream where it flowed
between banks about three feet high. To get the easier down, I swung
myself by a wild-cocoanut--(so called, it bears bunches of scarlet
nutlets)--which grew upon the brink. As I so swung, I received a crack
on the head that knocked me all abroad. Impossibl