The Wealth Of Vegetation Was Equal In Luxuriance And Entanglement To That Of The Tropics, Primeval Vegetation, On Which The Lumberer's Axe Has Never Rung.

Trees of immense height and girth, specially the beautiful Salisburia adiantifolia, with its small fan-shaped leaves, all matted

Together by riotous lianas, rise out of an impenetrable undergrowth of the dwarf, dark-leaved bamboo, which, dwarf as it is, attains a height of seven feet, and all is dark, solemn, soundless, the haunt of wild beasts, and of butterflies and dragonflies of the most brilliant colours. There was light without heat, leaves and streams sparkled, and there was nothing of the half-smothered sensation which is often produced by the choking greenery of the main island, for frequently, far below, the Pacific flashed in all its sunlit beauty, and occasionally we came down unexpectedly on a little cove with abrupt cedar-crested headlands and stacks, and a heavy surf rolling in with the deep thunder music which alone breaks the stillness of this silent land.

There was one tremendous declivity where I got off to walk, but found it too steep to descend on foot with comfort. You can imagine how steep it was, when I tell you that the deep groove being too narrow for me to get to the side of my horse, I dropped down upon him from behind, between his tail and the saddle, and so scrambled on!

The sun had set and the dew was falling heavily when the track dipped over the brow of a headland, becoming a waterway so steep and rough that I could not get down it on foot without the assistance of my hands, and terminating on a lonely little bay of great beauty, walled in by impracticable-looking headlands, which was the entrance to an equally impracticable-looking, densely- wooded valley running up among densely-wooded mountains. There was a margin of grey sand above the sea, and on this the skeleton of an enormous whale was bleaching. Two or three large "dug-outs," with planks laced with stout fibre on their gunwales, and some bleached drift-wood lay on the beach, the foreground of a solitary, rambling, dilapidated grey house, bleached like all else, where three Japanese men with an old Aino servant live to look after "Government interests," whatever these may be, and keep rooms and horses for Government officials - a great boon to travellers who, like me, are belated here. Only one person has passed Lebunge this year, except two officials and a policeman.

There was still a red glow on the water, and one horn of a young moon appeared above the wooded headland; but the loneliness and isolation are overpowering, and it is enough to produce madness to be shut in for ever with the thunder of the everlasting surf, which compels one to raise one's voice in order to be heard. In the wood, half a mile from the sea, there is an Aino village of thirty houses, and the appearance of a few of the savages gliding noiselessly over the beach in the twilight added to the ghastliness and loneliness of the scene.

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