3 i2 THE CORAL LANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 



endeavour was made at the time to introduce it in the London 

 market, but it now seems to be forgotten. 



In the Friendly Islands, as well as in all the neighbouring 

 groups, great quantities of the ti, or dragon-tree, are found. 

 The root when cooked contains an extraordinary quantity of 

 saccharine matter ; indeed, it seerns as if it had been boiled in 

 syrup. Eum is distilled from it in the Friendly Islands, as 

 well as from the sugar-cane. What applies, however, to Fiji 

 applies also to Tonga for the most part, and a repetition of the 

 riches of the Pacific groups is unnecessary. Some day my 

 countrymen will understand and appreciate them. Until quite 

 recently we have had an incurable preference for investments 

 in the loans of South American republics, or for lending our 

 money at high rates of interest to the 'sick man' by the 

 Bosphorus. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE LINE ISLANDS. 



POLYNESIAN ' labour ' is mainly recruited from the Gilbert and 

 Kingsmill Groups on the Equator. The natives are called 

 Tokalaus (or North-Eastern) in Fiji ; Tapitaweans in Samoa, 

 from the largest island of the Kingsmill Group ; and Arorais in 

 Tahiti or Marquesas, that being the island from which they 

 were first brought to Tahiti. They live on islands little more 

 than large sand-banks surrounded by coral-reefs, and their 

 principal food consists of cocoa-nuts, fish, and the dried fruit of 

 the screw-palm. With cocoa-nuts their islands are well sup- 

 plied, and numbers were planted every year even in the old 

 days. Since white traders have come among them, and they 



