September i, 1885.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



20t 



FIJI SKETCHER-BY VITI. 



OUR COCONUTS. 

 Our coconuts from Fiji are not unfamiliar objects on 

 the Melbourne wharves, and are even hawkeil about your 

 streets. Juveniles are also acquainted with them in the 

 shape of white shavings, most fascinatingly cry.stallized 

 over with tinted sugars, and exposed in that fairyland 

 of delight, a iirst-class confectioner's window. Coir fibre, 

 coir rope, and coir matting are well known too, I have 

 no doubt ; but you cannot realize ail about the coconut 

 in Southern Australia ; and your scenes auil surroundings 

 are quite different from those in which the handsome 

 palm and its useful products flourish. Nay, you cannot 

 know the nut in its proper drinking stage, a smooth 

 green thing which, when the top is struck off, is a 

 fountain of clear, delicious liquid, cool and sweet, and 

 as much as a man can drink. Nor in some merchant's 

 offices Is the dried kernel, tons of which they used to 

 regularly sell before the Germans well-nigh monopolized 

 the trade, known very much about — if we are to accept 

 the testimony of Mr. William Seed, once a very popular 

 Inspector-General of I'olice in |Fiji. He asserted that 

 when visitint; Sydney, he was informed by a leading merch- 

 ant that copperas formed a large item in the exports of 

 Fiji. " Copperas '." saiil the astonished Mr. .Seed. " Why, 

 I never heard we had any there." ** Oh, yes, it is your 

 chief article of export." " Can't be. It is impossible 

 that I should not have known it had such been the 

 case." "Nonsense !" urged the positive and intelligent 

 Sydney merchant, " I ought to know, for I have sold 

 hundreds of tons of it." That beat Mr. Seed into patient 

 resignation to the inevitable, but it came out in time 

 that copra was what was meant, and as that commod- 

 ity appears in market reports and price quotations, as 

 " copras rising" or " copras £!) os. per ton," the mineral 

 or chemical product, copperas, and the vegetable product, 

 copra, were regarded as one and the same by the lead- 

 ing Sydney merchant, according to Mr. Seed. Mr. Seed, 

 who wa-s well known here to be entirely without the 

 laump of veneration, audaciously asserted that the same 

 igrorance existed in lyielboume ! If so, there is an open- 

 ing even for such an article as this, which is not in- 

 tended for an exhaustive monogram on the coconut. 



The first peculiar and distinctive feature of the isles 

 of Fiji to a voyager from Victoria is the surge-rimmed 

 reef ; the second is the coconut palm. As it stands 

 upon some breezy cape waving like a bunch of ostrich 

 feathers on a slight cane stem, in the distance it at 

 once catches the eye as something new and quite a 

 thing of beauty. Then, as the island shores are drawn 

 nearer to, the long lines of tall palms fringing the 

 white coral sand of the beach delight the gazer, and 

 he feela that he has got into another worlri. The South 

 Sea islets have a picturesqueness of their own, derived 

 from high and fantastically broken outlines ; from a 

 picturesque, if dangerous setting of coral-edged reef-rings ; 

 from outposts of " patches," over which the sea breaks 

 with startling force ; and also from the lovely verdure 

 with which the hillsides are clothed, a perfect" study of 

 many shades of exquisite green. But a very great deal 

 of their charm is really due to the elegant and ever- 

 pleaiiing effect of the palms that crown the heights or 

 etand in thick groves on the flats, or border with a tall 

 and stately palisading the gleaming sands. Nature for 

 centuries has thus adorned Fiji, the long, roUitig waves 

 of the Pacific washing the plain, brown nuts from some 

 distant strand, and casting them where aught else would 

 perish, but where they take root and thrive. The dark 

 brown, luisightly, unpromising lumps, drifting as mere 

 waifs of the careless sea, possessed within them the 

 potentialities of great beauty, and marvellous usefulness, 

 and future wealth, and as they slowly draw near the 

 coral lands of Fiji they meant glory to the islands, food, 

 drink, timber, and cordage to the people, and prosperity 

 and money to the Jlesfrs. Hennings. Knt the aborig- 

 ines have supplemented with their own fitful toil the 

 •low, grand processes of Nature. A large proportion of 

 the plams of Fiji have been planted, and nearly every 

 village meant a grove of coconuts, and almost every 

 grove of nuts iqdiodtcs the site of a, native village, 

 2« 



But in addition to this, to the work of Nature and tho 

 work of Fijians, a great deal has been done by foreign 

 settlers, pioneer planters, and enterprizing colonists. 

 Large areas of land have been placed under cultivation 

 by these later factors in the development of the country, 

 and nut planting has been carried on scientifically, 

 atiil with regularity and stuily— but not in all cases 

 with success. Nature and the Fijians certaiidy seemed 

 to have known best. Yet, failures apart, there are 

 some noble estates of coconut groves in the group. 

 These are not to be found about Suva, that objection- 

 able place having scarcely a palm to indicate that there 

 are any in the country at all, but on Vanua Levu, and 

 the M'indward Islands. And it is a glorious sight to 

 look from a vessel's deck upon a hill-side clothed with 

 hundreds upon hundreds of fine palms, with full, large 

 crowns of sheeny fronds, the trees set out with mathe- 

 matical regularity ; or to stand on a flat, grassy area 

 under a forest of palms, which rear their graceful heatls 

 to an equal height above you, their tall stems ranging 

 far away to the left, right, front, and back of you. 

 " Under the palms " browse cattle, who leisurely per- 

 form a double duty, fattening themselves for the mar- 

 ket and keeping the ground clear. In this way coco- 

 nut trees and cows do well together, provided that the 

 trees have passed their minority before their bovine 

 friends are introduced. Some fine coconut estates are 

 at Savusavu Kay (notably Mr. Fenton's), and from 

 there comes a supply, too, of beef for Levuka's 

 " Smithfield Butchery." Attention is now being paid to 

 the rearing of well-bred stock, as the grazing has proved 

 such a success. Mango Island has a glorious show 

 of nut palms growing on its hill-sides and nestling in 

 thick profusion in its valleys, and there may be seen 

 the plant in every stage of its growth, from the hoary 

 old patriarchs planted by the aboriginal residents on the 

 island to young things that boast more leaves than stem 

 and have been sot out in equidistant rows by order of 

 Mr. Borron, the manager. Of these there are over 500 

 acres, and, from time to time, more will be put in, 

 until the isle shall be one mass of fruitful green. The 

 finest coconut beach in the country is to be seen at 

 Lomaloma, where for miles there is a good wide road, 

 and many hamdsome avenues of native planted palms. 

 The most restful, delicious, and altogether Edenlike por- 

 tion of the group is this same Lomaloma. No one 

 arriving in Suva could ever imagine that there was a 

 Lomaloma in Fiji, 



I have spoken of the planting of these "royal nuts," 

 as Kiugsley called them, by Dame Nature herself, who 

 washed them on coral beaches by her fast-following 

 waves ; but it must not be forgotten that the dear old 

 lady's efforts have been largely supplemented by her 

 intelligent clnldren, the anthropoids. T'he Fijian took up 

 the work, and assisteil nature to make the islands 

 beautiful, though the idea of the beautiful must have 

 been a very latent motive with him, for he is the most 

 out-and-out utilitarian that I know. And his mode of 

 operation is this: — He begins with the nut just when 

 the Warrnambool planter does with his potato — when it 

 sprouts. That soft, pale, white mucilage which you see 

 in the green drinking nut, surrounding the pint and a 

 half of liquid, becomes the hard, white substance which 

 you know so well in Melbourne, this may be compared 

 with the white of an egg. A yellow substance formsand 

 gradually absorbs the whole cavity occupied by the sweet 

 liquid, and this, known as "vara" (the indigestible delight 

 of all children), is the yolk of the egg, and from it 

 comes the germ of life. Whether this coconut egg, 

 called a •' griffin's egg" in an old MS., is holoblasfc or 

 mesoblast may be left to the keen, dividing mind of 

 him who telegraphed fo wisely concerning the ovum 

 of the duckbilled platypus to the British A.'^sociatiou at 

 Montreal. But from this vara springs a tiny shoot which 

 finds its way out at an eye in the hard shell, with 

 wonderful foresight bor(d and temporarily doted for 

 the occasion. The sprout asserts itself, opening the 

 lough husk with a lance-point, and then throwing out 

 leaves in the open air. Now the Fijian eye takis notice 

 of it, and the nut is removed from the ground where 



it h'»d f:illrn fi-nrii ihe pfireiit, iKtliil. liiidHniHt'cJ Ijy its great 



