They then proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening meal. A light was procured, by rubbing a blunt pointed stick in a groove made in another, as if with intention of deepening it, until by the friction the dust became ignited. In about ten minutes the sticks were consumed, and the stones hot. They had previously folded up in small parcels of leaves, pieces of beef, fish, ripe and unripe bananas, and the tops of the wild arum. These green parcels were laid in a layer between two layers of the hot stones, and the whole then covered up with earth, so that no smoke or steam could escape. In about a quarter of an hour, the whole was most deliciously cooked. I could not look on the surrounding plants without admiration. I chewed a piece, and found that it had an acrid and unpleasant taste, which would have induced any one at once to have pronounced it poisonous. Thanks to the missionaries, this plant now thrives only in these deep ravines, innocuous to every one. There were, moreover, several other wild fruits, and useful vegetables. The little stream, besides its cool water, produced eels, and crayfish. I felt the force of the remark, that man, at least savage man, with his reasoning powers only partly developed, is the child of the tropics. I mention all these waterfalls in this one brook, to give a general idea of the inclination of the land. In the little recess where the water fell, it did not appear that a breath of wind had ever blown. The thin edges of the great leaves of the banana, damp with spray, were unbroken, instead of being, as is so generally the case, split into a thousand shreds. Thus seated, it was a sublime spectacle to watch the shades of night gradually obscuring the last and highest pinnacles. At our meals neither of the men would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace. At daylight my friends, after their morning prayer, prepared an excellent breakfast in the same manner as in the evening. I suppose such enormously capacious stomachs must be the effect of a large part of their diet consisting of fruit and vegetables, which contain, in a given bulk, a comparatively small portion of nutriment.