THE COCOA-NUT. SINGULAR APPEARANCE. 243 



ed Captain Ross's party. Mr. Hare, upon this, was 

 ultimately obliged to leave the place. 



The Malays are now nominally in a state of 

 freedom, and certainly are so, as far as regards 

 their personal treatment ; but in most other points 

 they are considered as slaves. From their discon- 

 tented state, from the repeated I'emovals from islet 

 to islet, and perhaps also from a little mismanage- 

 ment, things are not very prosperous. The island 

 has no domestic quadruped excepting the pig, and 

 the main vegetable production is the cocoa-nut. 

 The whole prosperity of the place depends on this 

 tree : the only exports being oil from the nut, and 

 the nuts themselves, which are taken to SingajDore 

 and Mauritius, where they are chiefly used, when 

 grated, in making curi'ies. On the cocoa-nut, also, 

 the pigs, which are loaded with fat, almost entire- 

 ly subsist, as do the ducks and poultry. Even a 

 huge land-crab is furaished by nature with the 

 means to open and feed on this most useful pro- 

 duction. 



The ring-formed reef of the lagoon-island is sur- 

 mounted in the greater part of its length by linear 

 islets. On the northern or leeward side there is 

 an opening through which vessels can pass to the 

 anchorage within. On entering, the scene was very 

 curious and rather pretty ; its beauty, however, en- 

 tirely depended on the brilliancy of the suiTOund- 

 ing colours. The shallow, clear, and still water 

 of the lagoon, resting in its gi'eater part on white 

 sand, is, when illumined by a vertical sun, of the 

 most vi'V'id green. This brilliant expanse, several 

 miles in width, is on all sides divided, either by a 

 line of snow-white breakers from the dark heaving 

 waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heav- 

 en by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops 

 of the cocoa-nut trees. As a white cloud here and 



