uth with a tuft of grass, industriously caught and cracked fleas
from its back. Both Lloyd and I grew very sleepy, and as we did not like
to leave till the election was decided, we just threw ourselves down and
took a nap at the feet of the councillors: nor did we wake till the
chief called out to us in English "it is finished." I never thought I
should be able to calmly sleep at a public meeting on a platform in the
face of several hundred people: but it is wonderful how quickly one
takes up the ways of a people when you live with them as intimately as
we do.

I hear dinner coming on the table, so with much love from us all to you
and other dear ones, including our dear friend Henry James, believe me,
affectionately yours,

FANNY V. de G. STEVENSON.]

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Yacht Casco, at Sea, 14th January 1889._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Twenty days out from Papeete. Yes, sir, all that, and
only (for a guess) in 4 deg. north or at the best 4 deg.30', though already the
wind seems to smell a little of the North Pole. My handwriting you must
take as you get, for we are speeding along through a nasty swell, and I
can only keep my place at the table by means of a foot against the
divan, the unoccupied hand meanwhile gripping the ink-bottle. As we
begin (so very slowly) to draw near to seven months of correspondence,
we are all in some fear; and I want to have letters written before I
shall be plunged into that boiling pot of disagreeables which I
constantly expect at Honolulu. What is needful can be added there.

We were kept two months at Tautira in the house of my dear old friend,
Ori a Ori, till both the masts of this invaluable yacht had been
repaired. It was all for the best: Tautira being the most beautiful
spot, and its people the most amiable, I have ever found. Besides which,
the climate suited me to the ground; I actually went sea-bathing almost
every day, and in our feasts (we are all huge eaters in Taiarapu) have
been known to apply four times for pig. And then again I got wonderful
materials for my book, collected songs and legends on the spot; songs
still sung in chorus by perhaps a hundred persons, not two of whom can
agree on their translation; legends, on which I have seen half a dozen
seniors sitting in conclave and debating what came next. Once I went a
day's journey to the other side of the island to Tati, the high chief of
the Tevas--_my_ chief that is, for I am now a Teva and Teriitera,