Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/304

 # 274 FIJI AND THE FIJIANS. tain intervals. Many were the inconveniences and sufferings and dan- gers resulting from this delay ; but these were not complained of, or even mentioned, except when friendly correspondence between the different Stations made them known, and brought about such an inter- change of comforts as the slender store of each could afford. A glimpse of how things went at the lone Station at Ono will instruct and interest those at home, and perhaps stir them up to pray more earnestly for blessings on the far-off Missionary and his household. In one of his letters, Mr. Watsford writes, referring to his wife's recent confinement without the ordinary comforts and attention her case demanded : — " It was an anxious time. If it please God, I never wish to be alone again on such an occasion ; and I wish that no other brother, with experience anything like mine, will ever be alone at such a time. It is going through the fire ; and a Missionary should, if called to it, pass through the burning flame ; but it is questionable whether it is well to take him, or let him go, through. In the same letter he says : " There cannot possibly be any place in the world, I should think, as bad as Ono for mosquitoes. I thought Rewa was bad enough, but it is nothing to Ono. No rest day or night. I cannot tell you how we have been tormented. When your letters came, we did not know what to do to get them read. We could not sit down to it. We had to walk, one with the candle and one reading, and both thrashing at them with all our might. We could not sit to get our food. And, although we did everything we could to keep them out of the curtains, yet they get in in numbers, and night after night we can get no sleep. Mrs. W. was wearied out, and James was bitten most fearfully. Very many of the people went to sleep at Mana, an island free from mosquitoes, on the reef, and they advised us to go there, which we did at last. We had a house taken there, and lived there three weeks. We then came back to Ono Levu. Since then we have had hot weather, and fewer mosquitoes ; but lately we have had much rain, and they are now very troublesome. I am scratching and kicking with all my might while I YYite this. They ' never tire nor stop to rest." " Our flour is very bad. We have had to throw a good deal away ; and what we eat is very bad ; it sticks to one's teeth, and not to one's ribs. It must have been made from smutty wheat, or from some which, after it was cut, got wet with rain in the field, and c/rew, as I think, the farmers call it ; or the casks of flour must have been in the sea ; and although pork or beef may be preserved by salt, yet flour and butchers' knives valcamashna'd, (' salted,') as you call it, will not do. I am inclined to believe that the first is the case, and that the fellow is a roffue who suqqlied it."