a fenced park between the house and boundary; Peni's men
start to-day on the road; the garden is part burned, part
dug; and Henry, at the head of a troop of underpaid
assistants, is hard at work clearing. The part clearing you
will see from the map; from the house run down to the stream
side, up the stream nearly as high as the garden; then back
to the star which I have just added to the map.

My long, silent contests in the forest have had a strange
effect on me. The unconcealed vitality of these vegetables,
their exuberant number and strength, the attempts - I can use
no other word - of lianas to enwrap and capture the intruder,
the awful silence, the knowledge that all my efforts are only
like the performance of an actor, the thing of a moment, and
the wood will silently and swiftly heal them up with fresh
effervescence; the cunning sense of the tuitui, suffering
itself to be touched with wind-swayed grasses and not minding
- but let the grass be moved by a man, and it shuts up; the
whole silent battle, murder, and slow death of the contending
forest; weigh upon the imagination. My poem the WOODMAN
stands; but I have taken refuge in a new story, which just
shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe,
alone in that tragic jungle:-


THE HIGH WOODS OF ULUFANUA.

1. A South Sea Bridal.
2. Under the Ban.
3. Savao and Faavao.