6 THE PLANT WORLD 



The walls of the main room were decorated with the gaudy shells of 

 the " painted crab," a triton shell perforated to serve as a trumpet hung 

 from a nail by the door, and in a little alcove a lamp of coconut oil 

 burned before a bright-colored picture of the Virgin. A large trough 

 used for tanning, turned upside-down, served as a settee. There was also 

 a bench of Ifil wood and a table of the same material, which shone like 

 mahogany. In a few minutes I heard a terrible commotion among the 

 pigs under the floor, and found that one of them was about to be killed. 

 As there is a law to the effect that all animals intended for food must be 

 killed at the village slaughter-houses (so that they may first be inspected), 

 the old lady asked permission that the pig be killed, before her son-in- 

 law proceeded with the butchering. Its throat was cut and in a few 

 minutes all its bristles were singed off by torches of dry coconut leaves. 

 Seeing two young girls engaged in preparing supper I asked whether 

 they had any cycas nuts in the house. They showed me a bag full of 

 the prepared kernels, and I asked them to make me a tortilla of them. 

 They said that they had plenty of rice and corn, and they could not 

 understand why I should want a tortilla of fadang when there were so 

 many other better things to eat. However, they made me a thin cake of 

 the powdered nut, and I found it indeed to be inferior to rice and to corn. 

 The fadang nuts are poisonous when fresh. The kernels must be soaked 

 and the water changed repeatedly before they are fit to eat. They are 

 then dried and stored for use in times of scarcity of other food. 



The supper was excellent. Fortunately we had some venison, so I 

 declined to partake of the recently-killed pig. With the exception of the 

 venison, which was from the neighboring savanna on top of the island, 

 and the rice, which was grown near the village of Inarahan, everything 

 on the table had been produced in this little valley : eggs, yams, taro, 

 tortillas of corn, coffee of fine quality, brown sugar from coconut sap, 

 oranges and pineapples, and the coconuts, which furnished a cool, deli- 

 cious drink. We could have had chicken, and the old lady offered to have 

 chocolate prepared from beans grown on her own plantation. Even the 

 salt was of her manufacture, and the family had slippers made of deer- 

 skins tanned by the sons-in-law. Everything about the place bore 

 evidence of thrift. The old lady spoke with pride and affection of her 

 daughters and sons-in-law. She had been living many years in this 

 happy valley, which had been granted by the government to her husband, 

 and she could not understand how any one else could acquire a just title 

 to it. 



Before going to bed the lights were extinguished and a smudge was 

 kindled to drive out the mosquitoes. I was shown into a side room, where 

 a comfortable bed of mats had been prepared for me on the split bamboo 

 floor. My pillow was a cushion stuffed with floss from the silk-cotton 



