never looked up or knocked off, I could not but think I should have been sent on exhibition as an example to young literary men. 'Here is how to learn to write' might be the motto. You should have seen us; the veranda was like an Irish bog, our hands and faces were bedaubed with soil, and Faauma was supposed to have struck the right note when she remarked (à propos of nothing), 'Too much eleele (soil) for me.' The cacao, you must understand, has to be planted at first in baskets of plaited cocoa-leaf.[1] From four to ten natives were plaiting these in the wood-shed. Four boys were digging up soil and bringing it by the boxful to the veranda. Lloyd and I and Belle, and sometimes S. (who came to bear a hand), were filling the baskets, removing stones and lumps of clay; Austin and Faauma carried them when full to Fanny, who planted a seed in each, and then set them, packed close, in the corners of the veranda. From 12 on Friday till 5 p.m. on Saturday we planted the first 1,500, and more than 700 of a second lot. You cannot dream how filthy we were, and we were all properly tired."[2]
Three years later he records:
"I have been forbidden to work, and have been
