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The natives were now coming up by dozens at a time, bringing with them, in great arm-loads, fallen cocoanuts and breadfruits, and branches of bananas, and large draggled clusters of half-ripe plantains. "Why, what are all these?" Felix exclaimed in surprise. His Shadow looked up at him, as if amused at the absurd simplicity of the question.

To see the uncertain lines of youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to discover the half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured into perfect loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear, serious eyes, not forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the changed present this is to behold a miracle in the flesh.

They lived in a spacious house set in three acres of breadfruit and cocoanuts, an ancient grove long in their family. Often I squatted on their mats, dipping a gingerly finger in their popoi bowl and drinking the sweet wine of the half-ripe cocoanut, the while Mouth of God's mother spoke long and earnestly on the abode of the damned and the necessity for seeking salvation.

We will begin picking the peaches in the meantime!" So they picked several baskets full from the foremost row. In the second row the peaches were already scarcer. And in the last row there hung only a single half-ripe peach. They bent down the bough and picked it, and then allowed it to fly up again.

We now entered the wood of palms to eat our dinner, when suddenly a number of monkeys, alarmed by our approach, and the barking of the dog, fled like lightning to the tops of the trees; and then grinned frightfully at us, with loud cries of defiance. As I saw the trees were cocoa-palms, I hoped to obtain, by means of the monkeys, a supply of the nuts in the half-ripe state, when filled with milk.

And then, as if frightened at his own rashness, he continued in a low voice, "I believe that even here I am being watched. To-morrow I will have that grove of fig-trees yonder uprooted. The young priest there, who seems so fond of gardening, has other fruit in his mind besides the half-ripe figs that he is so slowly dropping into his basket.

If one accepts paddy, flowers, fruits, water, half-ripe barley, milk, or curdled milk, or anything made of meal or flour, the expiation is made by reciting the Gayatri prayer a hundred times. In accepting shoes or clothes at obsequial ceremonies, the sin is destroyed by reciting devoutly the same hymn a hundred times.

In the little peach orchard where there were a few half-ripe peaches, the very first fruits of the orchards in this untamed land, the hard peach stones, from which the meat was eaten away, hung on their stems among the leafless branches. The weed-grown bed of Grass River was swept as by a prairie fire. And for the labor of the fields, nothing remained.

The wild carrot is also an excellent vegetable, and from its root rich wine has been extracted. The order Eryngo has a species of which the roots when candied have great restorative powers. Of the Hederoma latifolia, Dr. Lindley remarks, that its half-ripe fruits, if sent to Europe, would give several original and valuable scents to the perfumer.

We passed through it to the quaint garden: rows of dwarf pears bordered its paths, and trellises and walls supported nectarines and vines, with sunshine and shadow caressing the half-ripe fruit. The shady spaces were occupied by guests who had arrived before us, and we saw with pleasure that ceremony had not been invited to attend.