came to an open-sided hut, with a thatched roof. It stood
on the verge of a little tree-clad bluff, overlooking the lake, two
hundred feet below. Seated upon some of the coarse mats of coco-nut leaf
called _tapa'au_ was a fine, stalwart young Samoan engaged in feeding
some wild pigeons in a large wicker-work cage. He greeted me in the
usual hospitable native manner, and taking some fine mats from one of
the house beams, his uncle and I seated ourselves, whilst he went to
seek his wife, to bid her make ready an _umu_ (earth oven). Whilst he
was away, my host and I plucked the pigeons, and also a fat wild duck
which Marisi had shot in the lake that morning. In half an hour the
young couple returned, the woman carrying a basket of taro, and the
man a bunch of cooking bananas. Very quickly the oven of hot stones was
ready, and the game, taro and bananas covered up with leaves.

I had crossed to Lano-to from the village of Safata on the south side
of Upolu and was on my way to Apia The previous night I had slept in the
bush on the summit of the range. Marisi gravely told me that I had been
foolish--the mountain forest was full of ghosts, etc.

Marisi himself lived in Apia, and he gave me two weeks' local gossip. He
and his nephew and niece had come to remain at the lake for a few
days, for they had a commission to catch and tame ten pigeons for some
district chief, whose daughter was about to be married.

We had a delightful meal, followed by a bowl of kava (mixed with water
from the lake), and as I was not pressed for time I accepted my host's
invitation to remain for the night, and part of the following day.

This was my fourth or fifth visit to this beautiful mountain lake of
Lano-to (_i.e._, the Deep Lake), and the oftener I came the more its
beauty grew upon me. Alas! its sweet solitude is now disturbed by the
cheap Cockney and Yankee tourist globe-trotter who come there in the
American excursion steamers. In the olden days only natives frequented
the spot--very rarely was a white man seen. To reach it from Apia takes
about five hours on foot, but there is now a regular road on which one
can travel two-thirds of the way on horseback.

The surface of the water, which is a little over two hundred feet
from the rugged rim of the crater, is according to Captain Zemsch,
two thousand three hundred feet above the sea, the distance across the
crater is nearly one thousand two hundred yards. The water is
always cold, but not