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Taloa, the princess, brought a bottle of cocoanut-oil for my hair, which another man might have regarded as coming late. It was impossible to entertain on the Spray after the royal manner in which I had been received by the chief. His fare had included all that the land could afford, fruits, fowl, fishes, and flesh, a hog having been roasted whole.
Before the break-down of their culture, this stone had been sprinkled with water, or anointed with cocoanut-oil, and covered with a black cloth, as in Hawaii. The Greeks called their similar god, Priapus, the Black-Cloaked. A trench had been made on the west side of the pit from which to ignite the fuel, a torch lit by fire struck from wood by friction.
The body was washed very thoroughly, and rubbed with cocoanut-oil. It was laid in the sun, and members of the family appointed to turn it many times a day, so that all parts might be subjected to an even heat. The anointing with oil was repeated several times daily.
On the other hand, the island sends to Europe and America annually $21,000,000 worth of tea, besides considerable quantities of rubber, cocoanut-oil, cacao, and plumbago. Ceylon's crude rubber commands the highest price, and is a crop growing by leaps and bounds. It is estimated that eight hundred million cocoanuts are grown yearly in Ceylon. An item in the list of exports is elephants.
As regards one's native companions, the Dayaks or Malays are quite satisfied as long as they get their full rations of rice and dried fish. This is the food they have always been accustomed to and their demands do not go further, although cocoanut-oil for frying the fish adds to their contentment.
The lamps are put in long rows or in circles, to fit the places they adorn. They are little earthenware jars full of cocoanut-oil, with a lip where is the wick. They burn very redly, and throw a red light about the platform, breaking the shadows that the moonlight throws and staining its whiteness.
At length we reached a small doorway which opened into a cavern black as Erebus. For a moment we paused undecided; and then out of the darkness crawled an aged Mahomedan bearing a tiny cocoanut-oil lamp. Lifting it above his head he pointed silently to a rickety staircase in the far corner, up which we groped our way with the help of a rope pendent from an upper beam.
Several strips of linen were scattered over the floor, with the customary litter of dried leaves, dust, refuse brought by rodents, cobwebs and the cast-off chrysalides of insects. In one corner was a bronze jar, Kenkenes examined it and found it contained cocoanut-oil for burning. "Of a truth this is intervention of the gods," he commented, a little dazed, but filling his lamp nevertheless.
When we returned to Samoa we were up at dawn, on shipboard, watching the horizon for the first faint cloud that floats above the island of Upulu. Already the familiar perfume came floating over the waters that sweet blending of many odors, of cocoanut-oil and baking breadfruit, of jessamine and gardenia. It smelt of home to us, leaning over the rail and watching.
Over this strange scene flickered the dim light of cocoanut-oil lamps, and outside a shower beat softly against the trees, and the moon looked down at us whitely from a cloudy sky. Presently a weird noise broke in upon our conversation. The orchestra had begun to play.
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