82 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



offering him at the same time its fruit for food, and 

 its leaves as ample thatcliing for the only kind of a 

 liut which, he thinks he needs in an unchanging, 

 tropical climate. 



As it stands along the shore, it invariably inclines 

 toward its parent, the sea, for borne on the waves 

 came the nut from which it sprang, and now fully 

 grown, it seeks to make a due return to its ancestor 

 by leaning over the shore and dropping into the 

 ocean's bosom rich clusters of its golden fruit. Here, 

 buoyed up by a thick husk which is covered with a 

 water-tight skin, the living kernel safely floats over 

 the calm and the stormy sea, until some friendly 

 wave casts it high up on a distant beach. The hot 

 sun then quickly enables it to thrust out its root- 

 lets into the genial soil of coral sand and fragments 

 of shells, and in a few years it too is seen tossing its 

 crest of plumes high over the white surf, which in 

 these sunny climes everywhere forms the margin of 

 the deep-blue ocean. 



When the nut is young, the shell is soft and not 

 separate from the husk. In a short time it turns from 

 a pale green to a light yellow. The shell is now 

 formed, and on its inner side is a thin layer, so soft 

 that it can be cut with a spoon. The natives now 

 call it Mapa nmida^ or the young cocoa-nut, and they 

 rarely eat it except in this condition. As it grows 

 older, the exterior becomes of a wood-color, the husk 

 is dry, and the shell hard and surrounded on the in- 

 side with a thick, tough, oily, and most indigestible 

 layer, popularly known as "the meat" of the nut. 

 This is the condition in which it is brought to our 



