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Updated: May 27, 2025
They brought guanas, tender young monkeys, and cocoa-nuts from the wood, wild kids from the rock, delicate ducks from the mountain-ponds, and sometimes a hog or a calf from the droves and herds which flourished in the rich savannahs on the southern side, on which they looked down from their ridge.
The articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at home. An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another on coffee, and a third on raisins, an article, together with currants, of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined.
We endeavoured to make them understand that we had desired to do them no harm, and that if the cocoa-nuts were theirs, we should be happy to pay for them.
Then the wind changed, and, springing up from the south, drove them wearily back once more in their tracks, and then bore them eastward. For another week they drove before the breeze, feeding on the cocoa-nuts. But the water in the calabashes was gone.
The industrious inhabitants were guiding their ploughs or otherwise in their fields, while here and there a grove of fruit-trees, with cocoa-nuts, areca palms, and clusters of bamboos rising among them, showed the situation of the villages.
What more would you have? Let the poor child have the pleasure of examining and tasting the cocoa-nuts." "Very well," replied I, "Fritz must teach them how to open them; and we must not forget the little monkey, who has lost his mother's milk." "I have tried him," cried Jack, "and he will eat nothing."
One brought a sheep, another a milch-goat for baby, while the rest contributed, severally, a couple of cocoa-nuts, a papaya, three mangoes, a few water-cresses, a sack of sweet potatoes, a bottle of milk, three or four quinces, a bunch of bananas, a little honey, half-a-dozen cabbages, some veal and pork, and so on; until it appeared as if every little garden on either side of the three leagues of stream must have yielded up its entire produce, and we had accumulated sacks full of cocoa-nuts and potatoes, hundreds of eggs, and dozens of chickens and ducks.
Without eggs, cocoa-nuts, or plantains, we had very short commons, and the boisterous weather being unpropitious for fishing, we had to live on what few eatable birds we could shoot, with an occasional cuscus, or eastern opossum, the only quadruped, except pigs, inhabiting the island.
Notwithstanding the death of these two savages, some more canoes came off on the 22nd from another part of the island, apparently with peaceable intentions, bringing cocoa-nuts, roots, and roasted hogs, which they bartered for knives, beads, and nails. They were, however, quite as well versed in stealing as their countrymen.
At various periods Jack and I had conveyed cocoa-nuts and other fruits, besides rolls of cocoa-nut cloth, to this submarine cave, partly for amusement, and partly from a feeling that we might possibly be driven one day to take shelter here from the savages. Little did we imagine that the first savages who would drive us into it would be white savages, perhaps our own countrymen.
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