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A crop of bread-fruit is sometimes shaken off the trees by a gale before it is ripe, and occasionally taro plantations are destroyed by drought and caterpillars; but the people have wild yams in the bush, preserved bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, and fish to fall back upon; so that there is rarely, if ever, anything like a serious famine.

The country is thickly sprinkled with cocoa- nuts and bread-fruit trees, which merge into the dense, dark, glorious forest, which tenderly hides out of sight hideous broken lava, on which one cannot venture six feet from the track without the risk of breaking one's limbs.

Before each guest was placed a half cocoa-nut full of salt water, another full of chopped cocoa-nut, a third full of fresh water, and another full of milk, two pieces of bamboo, a basket of poi, half a bread-fruit, and a platter of green leaves, the latter being changed with each course. We took our seats on the ground round the green table.

For our use, besides bread-fruit and fish, there was a turtle weighing perhaps more than twenty pounds. The repast was held in a hut, to which the whole neighbourhood also came, and forming themselves into groups a little on one side of us principal guests, eat the provisions they had brought with them.

The climate was considered healthy, and the natural productions of the island abundant. The bread-fruit was, perhaps, the most valuable.

One day I went to the Botanic Garden, where many plants, well known for their great utility, might be seen growing. The leaves of the camphor, pepper, cinnamon, and clove trees were delightfully aromatic; and the bread-fruit, the jaca, and the mango, vied with each other in the magnificence of their foliage.

I should never finish, if I were to try and name all the plants found in this shady valley, which might be called the botanic garden of Nature. Ernest was in ecstasies; he wished to carry away everything, but he did not know how to dispose of them. "Ah!" said he, "if only our grotto were open to this side!" At this moment Fritz came running out of breath, crying out, "The bread-fruit tree!

The whole of this upper cagelike work looks compact and tidy, and at the first glance is admired by strangers as being alike novel, ingenious, and neat. The wood of the bread-fruit tree, of which the greater part of the best houses are built, is durable, and, if preserved from wet, will last fifty years.

If such an one could but have followed our two friends into the wide-verandahed house, sat down with them in the cool trellised room, where the wine shone on the lamp-lighted tablecloth; tasted of their exotic food the raw fish, the bread-fruit, the cooked bananas, the roast pig served with the inimitable miti, and that king of delicacies, palm-tree salad; seen and heard by fits and starts, now peering round the corner of the door, now railing within against invisible assistants, a certain comely young native lady in a sacque, who seemed too modest to be a member of the family, and too imperious to be less; and then if such an one were whisked again through space to Upper Tooting, or wherever else he honoured the domestic gods, "I have had a dream," I think he would say, as he sat up, rubbing his eyes, in the familiar chimney-corner chair, "I have had a dream of a place, and I declare I believe it must be heaven."

The whole island was thoroughly cultivated, and produced bread-fruit, cocoanut trees, plantains, bananas, shaddocks, yams, and other roots, the sugar-cane, and a fruit like a nectarine. The roads also were so well laid out that there was an easy communication from one part of the island to the other in every direction.