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Updated: August 10, 2024
Shrunken with age, toothless, decrepit, their only covering the ragged and faded pareus that spoke of poverty, they sat in the shade of a banian-tree, beating the fibrous inner bark of the breadfruit-tree. Over the hollow log that resounded with the blows of their wooden mallets the cloth moved slowly, doubling on the ground into a heap of silken texture, firm, thin, and soft.
A laughing Juno of thirty years, large and rounded as a breadfruit-tree, more than six feet in height, with a mass of blue-black hair and teeth that flashed white as a fresh-opened cocoanut, she rose from her mat on the paepae and rubbed my nose ceremoniously with hers.
What is still better, it is surrounded by bluffs and mountains that will shelter a big fleet against even the fury of a typhoon. Most of the islands are covered with a dense vegetation, tropical and richly colored. There is an abundance of hardwood trees, but the breadfruit, banana, and cocoa-palm are the most useful. The breadfruit-tree grows wild, but it is also cultivated.
The productive breadfruit-tree and the grapefruit with its yellow product abound. Truly, the trees and flowers to be seen on the way to Medillin are a revelation. The State of Vera Cruz borders the Gulf for a distance of five hundred miles, averaging in width about seventy-five miles. No other section of the country is so remarkable for its extreme temperature and for the fertility of the soil.
The Mutiny of the Bounty, perhaps the most romantic incident of these South Seas, was the result of an effort to transport breadfruit-tree shoots from Tahiti to the West Indies.
We were struck by the superb breadth and immense height of a breadfruit-tree the shadows of which fell over a small brick pagoda. This tree was a hundred feet tall, and the always glorious leaves, as large as aprons, indented and a glossy, dark green, made it a temple in itself worthier of the ministrations of priests than the ugly brick or frame structure of our cities.
As the tree grew, it was a tohu oranga or sign of life for the child; if it flourished, the child would prosper; if it withered and died, the parents augured the worst for the little one. In some parts of Fiji the navel-string of a male infant is planted together with a coco-nut or the slip of a breadfruit-tree, and the child's life is supposed to be intimately connected with that of the tree.
Except for the hum of the brawling stream and the cries of birds, the silence was unbroken, and only two or three small children, who were playing under the shade of a breadfruit-tree, were visible. But these, as they heard the sound of the visitors' voices, came towards them shouting out to their elders within the huts that "four white people with guns" had come.
They extended over a large part of the island, yet there were also immense spaces devoted to pasturage, where not a breadfruit-tree nor a cocoa-nut palm was to be seen. In the depths of the forests, moreover, the conquerors of the islands had created artificial glades, in order that the herds of horned cattle which they had introduced might find food and also enjoy shelter from the sun.
Gedge joined him in serious opposition to the plan, urging that I would not be able to find a place to live, that there was no hotel, club, lodging, or food for a stranger. But I was determined to stay, though I must sleep under a breadfruit-tree. As I was a mere roamer, with no calendar or even a watch, I had but to fetch my few belongings ashore and be a Marquesan.
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