<FROM ISLAND UNTO ISLAND: 325 



Reva has five islands Avithin its reef, one of which is clothed 

 with forest and watered abundantly. 



I have before mentioned the pandanus, or screw-palm ; this 

 remarkable tree flourishes most abundantly in the Tuamotus ; 

 though it is to be found more or less all over the islands of the 

 Coral Sea. This is a most valuable product, and deserves to 

 be better known. It is a very suggestive fact that the pandanus, 

 custard-apple, and other tropical productions of this region are 

 found in a fossil state in the Isle of Sheppey, in England. The 

 pandanus is called ' screw-palm' for the reason that it grows 

 with a twist, like the screw of an auger. Its height is 

 generally from 20 to 40 feet, the stem being straight like a 

 column, sending forth branches at regular intervals in such a 

 form as sometimes to remind one of the golden candlestick 

 in the tabernacle of Moses. Each of these limbs terminates 

 in a tuft of long drooping leaves, having in the centre a 

 large yellowish flower, of an overpowering odour, very agree- 

 able, but sickly by reason of its intensity. Underneath this 

 tuft hangs the fruit, which is of a dark green colour, out- 

 wardly of the size of a man's head, and a form resembling a pine- 

 apple, or more exactly that of the cone which on ancient sculp- 

 tures is made to surmount the thyrsus of Bacchus. This fruit 

 is commonly regarded by white men not only as unpalatable, 

 but even as uneatable ; nevertheless, it constitutes almost the 

 sole subsistence of thousands of natives in the Kingsmill and 

 Marshall Groups, where no vegetable food exists. 



When the fruit is ripe it easily comes to pieces, and is found 

 to consist of a multitude of separate capsules, each of the form 

 of a truncated cone, with square corners, the small ends being 

 arranged around a central cone. Their surface is bright and 

 smooth as ivory : in one species yellow, in the other blood-red. 

 The outer end is as hard as a stone, the inner soft, of the con- 



