A HISTORY OF FIJI 527 



no cannibals, and one is safer in ''dark Fijia " than in the streets of 

 any civilized city. 



An extraordinary number of the forest trees of the Fijis furnish 

 food for man. Such are the bread-fruit, which grows to be 50 feet 

 high, with deeply incised glossy leaves, sometimes almost two feet long. 

 The Malay apple, or kavika (Eugenia), grows to a great height and 

 bears a delicious fruit, which, when ripe, is white, streaked with deli- 

 cate pink, and most refreshing and rose-like to the taste. The cocoanut 

 palm clusters in dense groves along the beaches, the long leaves mur- 

 muring to the sea breeze as they wave to and fro, casting their grateful 

 shade upon the native village. Of all trees none is more useful to 

 tropical man than the cocoanut. In time of drought it provides a life- 

 sustaining drink, its leaves serve to thatch the sides of houses and its 

 nuts become drinking cups, or provide oil or food; its wood serves for 

 manifold purposes; its terminal bud is the celery of the tropical epi- 

 curean, and the sap from its flower-stalk provides an intoxicating bev- 

 erage. Indeed, to do justice to its uses would lead us so far afield that 

 we must perforce desist. Curiously, the cocoanut thrives only on the 

 lowlands near the ocean, and flourishes best where the sea-spray settles 

 upon its leaves, or even where its roots sink beneath the level of the 

 salt water. Very rarely one sees a cocoanut palm growing upon the moun- 

 tain side at Tahiti, up to 800 feet above the sea, but this is exceptional. 

 Bananas and the wild plantain (Fei) grow luxuriantly in the forest, 

 as do also oranges, lemons, limes, shaddocks, guavas, alligator pears, 

 the papaw, mango and many other smaller shrubs and vegetables. 

 Indeed, from remote times the natives have cultivated the soil, and their 

 principal farinaceous food to-day consists in the yam (Dioscorea), 

 which becomes from four to eight feet in length, and in the dalo, a 

 caladium, which grows in swampy places. In time of harvest they 

 often bury the breadfruit, dalo or bananas in pits lined thickly with 

 leaves and covered with earth and with stones to foil the pigs. Treated 

 thus, the fruit ferments and may remain for months before being cooked 

 and eaten. Famine is indeed all but impossible in the high islands of 

 the tropical Pacific. 



In the rich soil of the l)road Rewa valley sugar-cane is cultivated 

 extensively. Cotton becomes a perennial tree in Fiji and produces an 

 exceptionally good quality of boll. Delicious pineapples grow on the 

 less fertile soils, and coffee thrives on the mountain slopes. Indeed, 

 had the Fijis but a market for their produce, they would outstrip 

 Hawaii as centers of agricultural industry. 



Even in savage days the natives delighted to cultivate flowers, and 

 the chiefs wore garlands of blossoms around their heads as do the young 

 men and maidens of to-day. It was by means of the flowers that they 



