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The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held.
Although the people of this island had no notion of the use of iron, they were not so savage as at first appeared; their plantations were carefully cultivated, and produced sugar-canes and yams, bread-fruit, plantains, and cocoanuts. They had, however, one of the chief characteristics of savages the women carried all the burdens, and were compelled to do every description of hard work.
Then she went on along the beach, panting and groaning, but resolutely seeking for cocoanuts. Quickly she found one, and, as she glanced around, a second. She broke one, drinking its water, which was mildewy, and eating the last particle of the meat. A little later she found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful, and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger.
About 2 o'clock, P. M. we arrived near the land, hove the schooner to, and sent two boats ashore, to get provisions. At sunset the boats returned, loaded with cocoanuts and bup. We hoisted up our boats, and with a strong breeze, it being the inclement season of the year, prosecuted our voyage to the Sandwich Islands, & had much boisterous weather during the passage.
"One of the few men I'd care to go along with, hell for leather, on a forlorn hope or anything of that sort," Dick said. "He was on the Nethermere when she went ashore at Pango in the '97 hurricane. Pango is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high water mark, a lot of cocoanuts, and uninhabited. Forty women among the passengers, English officers' wives and such.
The turf ran under these trees for about forty yards and then died gradually away under the same thick shade which destroyed all other vegetation in this wood, and made it so easy to see and travel. He gathered a few cocoanuts that had burst out of their ripe pods and fallen to the ground; and ran on till he reached a belt of trees and shrubs, that bounded the palm forest.
The launch was stopped to enable the party to see his craft. "You can see that his boat is a lot of cocoanuts, a hundred or more, strung together with lines. The raft easily floats the man, with the current, down to the city, where he sells his fruit, and then walks back, or rows in a passage-boat for his fare," Mr. Webb explained forward, and Mr. Gollan aft.
Could it have been then, that when I asked him whether he desired to go to this heaven of bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and young ladies, which he had been describing, he answered by saying something equivalent to our old adage 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'? if he did, Kory-Kory was a discreet and sensible fellow, and I cannot sufficiently admire his shrewdness.
And so it is that Arul comes to school. She is but eight, yet with a mouth to feed and a body to clothe, and the rice pot often empty, the halving of her daily wage means self-denial to all the family. So it is that Arul, instead of herding cattle all day, runs swiftly back to the one-roomed schoolhouse under the cocoanuts and arrives not more than half an hour late.
The Karlsefin had come, he said, from New York, to which port her latest load of oranges and cocoanuts had been conveyed. Two or three of the freighter sloops were engaged to assist in the work, for the captain was anxious to make a quick return in order to reap the advantage offered by a certain dearth of fruit in the States.
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