"You see," he continued, "that Levuka consists practically of a single thoroughfare which we call Beach Street, for the very practical reason that it follows the course of the beach. Outside the town it is prolonged into a road that nearly surrounds the island of Ovolau, and will completely encircle it in time. Two or three years ago we started to build a street railway; we made surveys and subscribed for the stock, but the Government opposed the project, and it was given up."
FRED'S FLY.
FRANK'S MOSQUITO.
Our friends found accommodations at one of the hotels, and were fairly comfortable, or would have been if they could have escaped the flies and mosquitoes. These insects were numerous enough to form a veritable plague, and seemed to take special delight in annoying strangers. A planter who was stopping at the hotel declared that the flies had sentinels stationed to give notice of the arrival of a stranger so that all could pounce on him at once, and that whenever the flies grew weary of their work the mosquitoes came forward to relieve them. Frank made a sketch of a Feejee mosquito, while Fred took the likeness of a native fly. These works of art were laid carefully away where the subjects thereof could not reach them with intents of destruction or mutilation.
Dinner was taken at the hotel-table, and proved, on the whole, a pleasant affair. The youths made several acquaintances among the planters, merchants, and others who were stopping there; Frank and Fred added materially to their stock of information relative to the agricultural and other advantages of Feejee, and also to the mode of life among the residents. The dinner consisted of pork, salt and fresh beef, chicken, yams, taro, and other vegetables, together with English and American preserves, and potted things that are found wherever Englishmen are settled in the eastern or southern hemisphere. "You may not think much of it when compared with a dinner in New York or London," said one of the planters, "but if you go and live six months or a year on a plantation you'll think a dinner here is the very height of luxury. Salt beef and occasional chickens and pigs are our only meats on the plantations, backed up by yams and taro in one unvarying round. Where we can afford it we have potted and canned things, but they are expensive, and very often cannot be had at any price. It has repeatedly happened that men who had been living on the rough fare of the plantations came to Levuka after an absence of months, and overfed themselves at the hotel-table to such an extent as to bring on a fatal illness."
After dinner they sat on the veranda of the hotel and enjoyed the land-breeze which sets in a little after sunset, and is considerably cooler than the day breeze from the sea. It is also free from flies and mosquitoes, which at this time retire to the sleeping-rooms of the hotel to make ready for the arrival of the lodgers. On the veranda the conversation was continued, and many features of Feejeean life were touched upon.