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"No one in particular, my dear; but if you don't let me in, I shall be lodged in jail before five minutes be over." "I can't help that, young man," said she; "but where are ye from, darling?" "Hush! I am run from the Guava, now lying at the Cove."
Then came patches of sugar or Indian corn, and next a plantation of vanilla, trained to climb over closely-planted tall coffee, or else over vermilion bushes. Sometimes it is planted without more ado at the root of pruned guava bushes.
He spent some months in Papeete to make his plans and gain experience; then, on money borrowed from a friend in France, he bought an island in the Paumotus. It was a ring of land round a deep lagoon, uninhabited, and covered only with scrub and wild guava.
The axe was, therefore, freely used, and, one after another, nearly all the trees which produced this excellent fruit were cut down. Other fruit trees, as the orange, the guava, pomegranate, avocado pear, golden apple, water lemon, soursop, etc. grow spontaneously on almost every plantation, and furnish an abundance and a variety of refreshing, nutritious food, at different seasons.
He finds in his surroundings, as plentiful and as free as the water sprinkling before him, such strange neighbors as coffee, the tamarind, mango, pawpa, guava, banana, sapadillo, almond, custard apple, maumec apple, grape fruit, shaddock, Avadaco pear, and other equally new acquaintances.
The Devil, or evil spirit, which they suppose to exist also, claims their attention from the injury they suppose him capable of inflicting, and is worshipped under a variety of forms; at one time in a grove, or under the shade of a large tree, consecrated to his worship, they place, for the gratification of his appetite; a country mess, a goat, or other offering of this nature, which they may conceive to be acceptable to his divinity, who, however, is often cozened out of the offering by some sacreligious and more corporeal substance, to whose nature and wants it is more congenial; at some periods great faith is attached to their fetish, as an antidote against evil; and at others the alligator, the snake, the guava, and a number of other living animals and inanimate substances are the objects of their worship.
It also abounds in melons, pine-apples, guavas, and prickly pears. The shrub which produces the guava has long small boughs, with a white smooth bark, and leaves like our hazel. The fruit resembles a pear, with a thin rind, and has many hard seeds. It may be safely eaten while green, which is not the case with most other fruits in the East or West Indies.
He remitted, however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his little boy regularly every mail. He kept Macmurdo in cigars and sent over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly, and colonial produce to Lady Jane.
There is little healthy activity in any department of business. The whaling fleet has deserted the islands. A general pilikia prevails. Settlements are disappearing, valley lands are falling out of cultivation, Hilo grass and guava scrub are burying the traces of a former population.
The latter reach full height within six months and afford shade until guava and other shade trees planted on the field have attained sufficient size. A wait of five years is necessary before the coffee bushes begin to bear, but after that they continue indefinitely every year, the only labor required being that of keeping the plantation clear of brush and picking the berries when they are ripe.
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