190 THE MILK IN THE COCO-NUT 



say, is the fatal fact that, when once fairly started, it goes 

 on bearing fruit uninterruptedly for forty years. This is 

 very immoral and wrong of the ill-conditioned tree, because 

 it encourages the idyllic Polynesian to lie under the palms 

 all day long, cooling his limbs in the sea occasionally, 

 sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles 

 of Neaera's hair, and waiting for the nuts to drop down in 

 due time, when he ought (according to European notions) 

 to be killing himself with hard work under a blazing sky 

 raising cotton, sugar, indigo, and coffee, for the immediate 

 benefit of the white merchant, and the ultimate advantage 

 of the British public. It doesn't enforce habits of steady 

 industry and perseverance, the good missionaries say ; it 

 doesn't induce the native to feel that burning desire for 

 Manchester piece-goods and the other blessings of civilisa- 

 tion which ought properly to accompany the propagation of 

 the missionary in foreign parts. You stick your nut in 

 the sand ; you sit by a few years and watch it growing ; 

 you pick up the ripe fruits as they fall from the tree ; and you 

 sell them at last for illimitable red cloth to the Manchester 

 piece-goods merchant. Nothing could be more simple or 

 more satisfactory. And yet it is difficult to see the precise 

 moral distinction between the owner of a coco-nut grove in 

 the South Sea Islands and the owner of a coal-mine or a 

 big estate in commercial England. Each lounges deco- 

 rously through life after his own fashion ; only the one 

 lounges in a Kussia leather chair at a club in Pall Mall, 

 while the other lounges in a nice soft dust-heap beside a 

 rolling surf in Tahiti or the Hawaiian Archipelago. 



Curiously enough, at a little distance from the sandy 

 levels or alluvial flats of the sea-shore, the sea-loving coco- 

 nut will not bring its nuts to perfection. It will grow, 

 indeed, but it will not thrive or fruit in due season. On 

 the coast-line of Southern India, immense groves of coco- 



