LIFE IK THE SOUTH-SEA ISLANDS. 207 



ors the " Line Islands," from their position with respect to the equator. 

 In spite of their general unproductiveness, the numher of cocoanut-trees 

 is so large that there is a considerable export of copra. One English 

 and three German firms have nearly the whole business in their hands. 

 There is one American firm also, but its transactions must be much 

 less extensive than those of the English, and of at least two of the 

 German houses. All are represented by resident traders. At Majuro 

 Messrs. Henderson and MacFarlane have a very complete and exten- 

 sive head-station. At Jaluit the German firms of Hernsheim and Com- 

 pany, and the South Sea Company, the latter at the time of my visit 

 under the style of Capelle and Company, have large head-stations for 

 this part of Oceania. 



The contrast between Kusaie and Ponapi in the Carolines and the 

 low atolls of the Marshall, Gilbert, and Ellice groups, is striking and 

 agreeable. Both of the former are called by our sailors " high islands," 

 a designation which is soon appreciated by any one who has cruised 

 among the groups mentioned, Kusaie is densely wooded and pict- 

 uresque. Its soil is very fertile. The people, who only amount to 

 between three and four hundred, are all Christians, having been con- 

 verted by the American missionaries, who have an important station 

 on the island. The American missionaries are fond of giving to the 

 petty chiefs of the tribes with whom they come in contact the absurd 

 title of king. Tokusa, the chief of Kusaie, which name includes all 

 the islets near as well as the main island of Ualan, is accordingly called 

 king, though his subjects are so few. He speaks English well, and is 

 very intelligent and well-mannered. The natives are straight-haired 

 and rather light-colored. They paint their canoes a dull red, with 

 a pigment made of an ochreous earth found in two caves on Ualan. 

 Their houses are large, with high-pitched roofs and elevated gables. 

 Most of them now wear some article of European dress, but the garb 

 of the country is a broad sash woven of the fiber of an inedible banana, 

 frequently dyed black except at the ends, where there are some bright 

 colored bars, which make it resemble the silk scarfs of the Roman 

 peasantry. 



On the little Island of Lele, on which the natives live, there are 

 some interesting ruins, which appear to be those of a fortress with 

 Cyclopean walls of large irregular blocks of basalt, twenty-five to 

 thirty feet thick. There are also canals and artificial harbors. The 

 natives can give no account of them, though King Tokusa told me 

 that he believed they had been constructed by his ancestors. In the 

 splendid Island of Ponapi, the inhabitants of which are more barbarous 

 than those of Kusaie, there are even more remarkable ruins. Four- 

 sided platforms stand out of the water, and are composed of layers of 

 hexagonal basaltic prisms, like those of the Giant's Causeway, trans- 

 versely superimposed one on another, the prisms of a layer being at 

 right angles to those of the one above or below it. These platforms 



