COCOA-NUT TREE.

57

is often as sweet and as rich as that grown in the most fertile parts of the valley.

On first arriving in the islands, we used the cocoa-nut milk freely, but subsequently preferred plain water as a beverage; not that the milk became less agreeable, but because we supposed, perhaps erroneously, the free use of it predisposed to certain dropsical complaints prevalent among the people.

The cocoa-nut trees are remarkably high, sometimes sixty or seventy feet, with only a tuft of leaves, and a number of bunches of fruit, on the top; yet the natives gather the fruit with comparative ease. A little boy strips off a piece of bark from a purau, branch, and fastens it round his feet, leaving a space of four or five inches between them, and then, clasping the tree, he vaults up its trunk with greater agility and ease than a European could ascend a ladder to an equal elevation. When they gather a bunch at a time, they lower them down by a rope; but when they pluck the fruit singly, they cast them on the ground. In throwing down the nuts, they give them a whirling motion, that they may fall on the point, and not on the side, whereby they would be likely to burst.

Cocoa-nuts were formerly a considerable article of food among the common people, and were used with profusion on every feast of the chiefs; but for some years past they have been preserved, and allowed to ripen on the tree, for the purpose of preparing oil, which has recently become an article of exportation, although the value is so small as to afford but little encouragement to its extended manufacture.

The cocoa-nut oil is procured from the pulp, and is prepared by grating the kernel of the old nut, and depositing it in a long wooden trough, usually the hollow trunk of a tree. This is placed in the sun every morning, and exposed during the day; after a few days the grated nut is piled up in heaps in the trough, leaving a small space between each heap. As the oil exudes, it drains into the hollows, whence it is scooped in bamboo canes, and preserved for sale or use. After the oil ceases to collect in the trough, the kernel is put into a bag, of the matted fibres, and submitted to the action of a rude lever press; but the additional quantity of oil, thus obtained, is inferior in quality to that produced by the heat of the sun. This process requires considerable labour for the grating of the kernel by the hand; but it is probable, should its manufacture be continued, that mills will be erected for bruising the pulp.

In addition to these advantages, the shells of the large old cocoa-nuts are used as water-bottles, the largest of which will hold a quart; they are of a black colour, often highly polished, and, with care, last a number of years. All the cups and drinking vessels of the natives are made with cocoa-nut shells, usually of the omoto, which is of a yellow colour. It is scraped very thin, and is often slightly transparent. Their ava cups were generally black, highly polished, and sometimes ingeniously carved with a variety of devices, but the Tahitians did not excel in carving. The fibres of the husk are separated from the pulp by soaking them in water, and are used in making various kinds of cinet and cordage, especially a valuable

BOUNTY OF THE CREATOR.

59

coiar rope; and, as the pious Herbert sung two hundred years ago,

"The Indian's nut alone

Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and can,
Boat, cable, sail and needle, all in one."

It is impossible to contemplate either the breadfruit or cocoa-nut tree, in their gigantic and spontaneous growth, their majestic appearance, the value and abundance of their fruit, and the varied purposes to which they are subservient, without admiring the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator, and his distinguishing kindness towards the inhabitants of these interesting islands.

CHAP. III.

Varieties and appearance of the plantain and bananaVi or Brazilian plum-A-hi-a or jambo-Singular growth of the inocarpus, or native chesnut-Different kinds of ti, or Dracana-To, or sugar-cane-Foreign fruits and vegetables that flourish in Polynesia-Value of a garden in the South Sea Islands-Unsuccessful attempts to introduce wheat-Introduction of coffeeNative and foreign flowers-Tradition of the origin of the bread-fruit-Quadrupeds--Absence of venomous animals and reptiles-Manner of rearing pigs-Birds of the South Sea Islands-Albatross - Pigeons - Domestic fowls-Number and variety of fish on the coasts, and in the lakes and rivers.

MORE rich and sweet to the taste, though far less serviceable as an article of food, is the maia, plantain and banana, musa paradisaica and musa sapientum. These are also indigenous, although generally cultivated in the native gardens. They are a rich nutritive fruit, common within the tropics, and so generally known as to need no particular description here. There are not, perhaps, fewer than thirty varieties cultivated by the natives, besides nearly twenty kinds, very large and serviceable, that grow wild in the mountains. orea, or maiden plantain, with the other varieties, comes to the highest perfection in the South Sea Islands, and is a delicious fruit. The stalk, or tree, on which these fruits grow, is seldom above eight or twelve feet high; the leaves are fine broad specimens of the luxuriance of tropical vegetation,

The

PLANTAIN AND BANANA.

61

being frequently twelve or sixteen feet long, eighteen inches or two feet wide, of a beautiful pea-green colour when fresh, and a rich bright yellow when dry. The fruit is about nine inches long, and in shape somewhat like a cucumber, excepting that the angles are frequently well defined, which gives to the fruit, when ripe, the appearance of a triangular or quadrangular prism of a bright delicate yellow colour. Sixty or seventy single fruit are occasionally attached to one stalk. Each plantain stem, or tree, produces only one bunch of fruit; and when the fruit is ripe, it is cut down, and its place supplied by the suckers that rise around the root whence it originally sprung. If the suckers, or offsets, be four or five feet high when the parent stem is cut down, they will bear in about twelve months.

The fruit is not often allowed to ripen on the trees, but it is generally cut down as soon as it has reached its full size, and while yet green; the bunch is then hung up in the native houses to ripen, and is eaten as the fruit turns yellow. When they wish to accelerate their ripeness for a public entertainment, they cut them down green, wrap them in leaves, and bury them thirty-six or fortyeight hours in the earth, and on taking them out they are quite soft, and apparently ripe, but much more insipid than those which had gradually ripened on the tree, or even in the house. The kinds growing in the mountains are large, and, though rich and agreeable when baked, are most unpalatable when raw; they have a red skin, and a bright yellow pulp. Their native name is fei: their habits of growth are singular; for, while the fruit of all the other varieties is pendent from the stem, this rises erect from a short thick stalk