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During their rambles they found the valley to be much richer in vegetation, and more beautiful, than the distant view from the mountain-top had led them to expect. Small though the valley was, it contained, among other trees, the cocoa-nut palm, the bread-fruit, banana, and sandal-wood.
Guava, fig, custard apple, and bread-fruit trees, all were in bearing. "Our hospitable host plucked freely of the choicest for the benefit of his chance visitors. Was there ever such a fruit garden before, or elsewhere?
Some were tearing off the husks from cocoa-nuts; some, perched in the trees, were throwing down bread-fruit to their companions, who gathered them in heaps as they fell; while others were plying their fingers rapidly in weaving leafen baskets in which to carry the fruit. There were other matters, too, going on at the same time.
So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm trees arm in arm with a pretty woman. Where would she come from? Oh, that's the miracle!
I need scarcely say that, having made up our minds to go on this enterprise, we lost no time in making preparations to quit the island; and as the schooner was well laden with stores of every kind for a long cruise, we had little to do except to add to our abundant supply a quantity of cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, taro, yams, plums, and potatoes, chiefly with the view of carrying the fragrance of our dear island along with us as long as we could.
The marae is the forum or place of public assembly an open circular space, surrounded by bread-fruit trees, under the shade of which the people sit. Here the bridegroom and his friends and the whole village assembled, together with the friends of the bride.
The attendants set to work to clear away a large circle by cutting down the brushwood; we then retired to a spot which had been previously fixed on, where a camp was formed, and some, arbours which would shelter us for the night erected. Some of our people had in the meantime collected some wild bread-fruit, dug up some wild yams, and brought down some cocoanuts, which gave us an ample repast.
The leaves of the bread-fruit are of great size, and their edges are cut and scolloped as fantastically as those of a lady's lace collar. As they annually tend towards decay, they almost rival in brilliant variety of their gradually changing hues the fleeting shades of the expiring dolphin.
Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana, and in her own good time she brings them to maturity, when the idle savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite. Ill-fated people!
If the king of Atua was on a journey, and carried along shoulder high, as soon as he reached this village he had to get down and walk, as a mark of respect to the chivalrous villagers. Faleulu, or Housed-by-the-bread-fruit-tree, was so named from a party who came from Fiji by way of Manu'a and Tutuila, and who, on reaching Upolu, were benighted there and slept under a bread-fruit tree.
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