278 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



The cocoanut and pandanus are, in general, the only products of the 

 vegetable kingdom afforded for their sustenance, and fish and craba 

 from the reefs their only animal food. Scanty, too, is the supply ; and 

 infanticide is resorted to in self defence, where a few years would 

 otherwise overstock the half a dozen square miles of which their little 

 world consists. Yet there are more comforts than might be expected 

 on a land of so limited extent without rivers, without hills, in the 

 midst of salt water, with the most elevated point but ten feet above 

 high tide, and no part more than 300 yards from the ocean. Though 

 the soil is light, and the surface often strewed with blocks of coral, 

 there is a dense covering of vegetation to shade the native villages 

 from a tropical sun. The cocoanut, the tree of a thousand uses, 

 grows luxuriantly on the coral-made land after it has emerged from 

 the ocean ; and the scanty dresses of the natives, their drinking ves- 

 sels and other utensils, mats, cordage, fishing-lines, and oil, besides 

 food, drink, and building materials, are all supplied from it. The 

 pandanus or screw-pine nourishes well, and is exactly fitted for such 

 regions ; as it enlarges and spreads its branches, one prop after 

 another grows out from the trunk and plants itself in the ground, and 

 by this means its base is widened and the growing tree supported. 

 The fruit, a large ovoidal mass, made up of oblong dry seeds diverging 

 from a centre, each near two cubic inches in size, affords a sweetish 

 husky article of food, which, though little better than prepared corn- 

 stalks, admits of being stored away for use when other things fail. 

 The extensive reefs abound in fish, which are easily captured, and the 

 natives, with wooden hooks, often bring in larger kinds from the deep 

 waters. From such resources a population of 10,000 persons is sup- 

 ported on the single island of Taputeouea, whose whole habitable area 

 does not exceed six square miles. Water is to be found commonly in 

 sufficient quantities for the use of the natives, although the land is so 

 low and flat. They dig wells five to ten feet deep in any part of the 

 dry islets, and generally obtain a constant supply. The only source 

 of this water is the rains, which, percolating through the loose sur- 

 face, settle upon the hardened coral rock that forms the basis of the 

 island. As the soil is white, or nearly so, it receives heat but slowly, 

 and there is consequently but little evaporation of the water that is 

 once absorbed. 



Notwithstanding the great number of coral islands in the Paumotu 

 Archipelago, the botanist finds there only twenty-eight or twenty-nine 

 native species of plants. In the Marshall group, where the vegetation 

 is more varied, fifty-two native plants exist. The language of the 

 natives indicates their poverty, as well as the limited productions and 

 unvarying features of the land. All words like those for mountain, 

 hill, river, and many of the implements of their ancestors, as well as the 

 trees and other vegetation of the land from whence they are derived, 

 are lost to them ; and as words are but signs of ideas, they have fallen 

 off in general intelligence. It would be an interesting inquiry for the 

 philosopher, to what extent a race of men placed in such circum- 

 stances are capable of mental improvement. Perhaps the query might 

 be beat answered by another : How many of the various arts of civil- 



