300 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



L.). This tree also grows in plenty on the other is- 

 lands, and to a large size. Its fruit, improperly called 

 mastick-berries, is of the shape and size of a large 

 olive, smooth and yellow-green, and containing a hard, 

 smooth, egg-shaped kernel. To the taste it is rather 

 tough and clammy ; it is not a pleasant food eaten raw 

 nor wholesome, it is said. But cooked it is used for 

 the table or preserved in sugar. For the latter pur- 

 pose it had been gathered and was preparing by this 

 family, for sale in the town at one and a half bits the 

 quart. To lighten the labor of gathering, it was their 

 practice to fell the tree. The wood of the mastick- 

 tree is especially good for pales and palisadoes, lasting 

 extraordinarily well ; it is so hard and heavy that it 

 can scarcely be worked as long as it is green. 



We slept the night on the ground, on a coverlet of 

 pleated palm-leaves. The entire hut, roof and walls, 

 was covered with palm-leaves; the noise among these 

 dry leaves made by the least wind is so like that of a 

 falling rain as to startle the unaccustomed from their 

 sleep, fearing they may get wetted. But the leaves 

 are so skilfullv woven that if the work is done with 

 any diligence they keep out the heaviest rains. In 

 this way the poorer inhabitants of these islands build 

 their houses with little trouble and no expence, the 

 walls under these warm skies needing not to be very 

 thick. They have small care about supplies for winter, 

 the earth and the sea yielding one or another sort of 

 food throughout the year, and the climate calling for 

 few clothes, thus it costs them very little to satisfy the 

 essential wants of life, and they live as simply and 

 frugally as their more conspicuous neighbors do wan- 

 tonly and profusely. Their poverty does not keep 



