280 A MISSION TO VITI. 



number of cocoa-nuts withdrawn from consumption by 

 a primitive and wasteful method of making oil for ex- 

 portation, and cultivating, comparatively speaking, only 

 a few acres of ground, than by the almost endless series 

 of vegetable productions an enumeration of which 

 forms the subject of the succeeding pages. 



Colonial produce, properly so called, such as sugar, 

 coffee, tamarinds, and tobacco, may be expected from 

 Fiji in considerable quantities, as soon as Europeans 

 shall have devoted their attention to the subject ; since 

 the plants yielding them, long ago introduced, flourish 

 so well, that a j udicious outlay of capital might prove a 

 profitable investment. The sugar-cane (Saccharum offi- 

 cinarum. Linn.), called Dovu in Fijian, grows, as it were, 

 wild in various parts of the group, and a purple variety, 

 attaining sixteen feet high and a corresponding thick- 

 ness, is cultivated to some extent. No foreigners have 

 as yet set up mills, nor are the natives at present ac- 

 quainted with the process of making sugar ; they merely 

 chew the cane, and employ the juice for sweetening 

 their puddings. In the greater part of the group the 

 leaves are used for thatching the roofs of houses ; it is 

 only in Lakeba and others of the eastern islands where 

 those of a screw-pine (Pandanus odoratissimus. Linn.) 

 are preferred, whilst those of the Boreti (Acrosticlmm 

 aureum, Linn.), a common seaside fern, are still less 

 frequently used, though in the central islands they, in 

 common with those of the Makita (Parinarium laurinum, 

 A. Gray)> supply the chief materials for covering the 

 side walls of houses, churches, and temples. Coffee 

 (Coffea arabica, Linn.) will one day rank amongst the 



