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On either side of the broad beach before them the cocoa-nut trees came down like two regiments, and bending gazed at their own reflections in the lagoon. Beyond lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms and breadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils of the wild vine.
He began to collect the things, and carry them to the dinghy. He took the stay-sail and everything that might be useful; and when he had stowed them in the boat, he took the breaker and filled it with water at the water source in the wood; he collected some bananas and breadfruit, and stowed them in the dinghy with the breaker.
Simple they were, with no windows or doors, mere shelters, but cool and cheap, with no division of rooms, and no furniture but the sleeping mats and a utensil or two. Natives were seen cooking their simple meal of fish and breadfruit, or only the latter. The fire was in the ground or under a grill of iron on stones.
Soon after other natives came to us; and by noon there were thirty about us, from whom we obtained a small supply; but I could only afford one ounce of pork and a quarter of a breadfruit to each man for dinner, with half a pint of water, for I was fixed in my resolution not to use any of the bread or water in the boat.
They then divided the few breadfruit and cocoa-nut trees on the ground amongst themselves, or demanded such payment for these trees as we did not possess, and threatened revenge on us if the trees were injured by any person. They now became so unreasonable and offensive, and our dangers so increased, as to make our residence amongst them extremely trying.
The breadfruit are as big as Dutch cheese, weighing four or five pounds, their green rinds tuberculated like a golf-ball. Sapadillos, tamarinds, limes, mangoes, oranges, acachous, and a dozen other native fruits are to be had. Cocoanuts and papayas are of course, favorites. There are many kinds of cocoanuts.
A pacific sea!" they called to us as we passed them, and their eyes followed with envy the progress of Ghost Girl and Sister of Anna. The boat was already well loaded when I reached it. The fermented breadfruit wrapped in banana-leaves, the pig dug from the pit that morning and packed in sections of bamboo, the calabashes of river water, the bananas and drinking nuts, were all in place.
He mixed sulfur with some dry leaves, set them on fire with a spark from his tinderbox, and proceeded to smoke the bees out. Little by little the buzzing died down and the disemboweled hive yielded several pounds of sweet honey. Ned Land stuffed his haversack with it. "When I've mixed this honey with our breadfruit batter," he told us, "I'll be ready to serve you a delectable piece of cake."
I drew from him that he had bought eighteen acres of land for twelve hundred dollars, and had spent most of a year in preparing it for vanilla, cocoanuts, a few breadfruit, a small area of coffee and taro, and a vegetable patch. "We have very little money," he explained, "and live largely on catches in the sea and stream, and fruit and vegetables, with a dozen chickens for eggs.
There they were met by arriving guests, and the sound of laughter and splashing came up to us as darkness closed upon the paepae and the torches were lit. Lights were coming out like stars up the dark valley as each household made its vesper fire to roast breadfruit or broil fish, and lanterns were hung upon the bamboo palisades that marked the limits of property or confined favorite pigs.
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