170 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



great perfection. Sugar canes grow to an unusual size, one being brought to Captain 

 Cook eleven inches and a quarter in circumference, and having fourteen feet eatable. 

 Dogs, hogs, and rats are the only native qua- 

 drupeds of these islands, in common with all 

 others that have been discovered in the South 

 Sea. The king of these islands visited Eng- 

 land in the time of Geo. II., and again in 1824. 



1060. The Fiiendly Islands are in most respects 

 similar to O taheite (1061.). Tongataboo appears 

 to be a flat country, with a fine climate, and 

 universally cultivated. The whole of this island 

 is said to consist of enclosures, with reed fences 

 about six feet high, intersected with innumer- 

 able roads. The articles cultivated are bread- 

 fruit, plantains, cocoa-nuts, and yams. In the 

 other islands, plantains and yams engage most 

 of their attention ; the cocoa-nut and bread- 

 fruit trees are dispersed about in less order than 

 the former, and seem to give them no trouble. 

 Their implements of culture consist of pointed 

 sticks of different lengths and degrees of 

 strength. 



1061. The island of Otaheile is the principal 

 of the Georgian Islands. It is surrounded by 

 a reef of coral rocks. The surface of the 

 country, except that part of it which borders 

 upon the sea, is very uneven ; it rises in ridges 

 that run up into the middle of the island, and 

 there form mountains which may be seen at 

 the distance of sixty miles. Between the foot of 

 these ridges and the sea is a border of low land, 

 surrounding the whole island, except in a few 

 places where the ridges rise directly from the 

 sea. This border is of different breadths in 

 different parts, but no where more than a mile 

 and a half. 



1062. The soil of Otaheile, except on the very 

 tops of the ridges, is extremely rich and fertile, 

 watered by a great number of rivulets of excellent water, and covered with fruit trees 

 of various kinds. The low land that lies between the foot of the ridges and the sea, 

 and some of the valleys, are the only parts of the island that are inhabited, and here it is 

 populous : the houses do not form villages or towns, but are ranged along the whole 

 border, at the distance of about fifty yards from each other, with little plantations of 

 plantains, the tree which furnishes them with cloth. 



1063. The produce of Otaheite i^ the hres.di-fnx{t (Artocitrpus integrifolia), cocoa-nuts, 

 bananas of thirteen sorts, plantains; a fruit not unlike an apple, which, when ripe, is 

 very pleasant; sweet potatoes, yams, cocoas (^>um Colocasia, and Caladium esculentum, 

 both propagated by the leaves) ; a fruit known here by the name of jambu, and reckoned 

 most delicious ; sugar cane, which the inhabitants eat raw ; a root of the saloop kind, 

 \yhich th'fe inhabitants call pea ; a plant called etiiee, of which the root only is eaten ; a 

 fruit that grows in a pod, like that of a large kidneybean, which, when it is roasted, 

 eats very much like a chestnut, by the natives called whee ; a tree here called wharra, but 

 in the East Indies pandanus, which produces fruit something like the pine-apple ; a 

 shrub called nono ; the morinda, which also produces fruit ; a species of fern, of which 

 the root is eaten, and sometimes the leaves ; and a plant called theve, of which the root 

 also is eaten : but the fruits of the nono, the fern, and the theve, are eaten only by the 

 inferior people, and in times of scarcity. All these, which serve the inhabitants for food, 

 the earth produces spontaneously, or with little culture. They had no European fruit, 

 garden stuff, pulse, or legumes, nor grain of any kind, till some seeds of melons and other 

 vegetables were given them by Captain Cook. 



1064. Of tame animals, the Otaheitans have only hogs, dogs, and poultry; neither is 

 there a wild animal on the island, except ducks, pigeons, parroquets, with a few other 

 birds, and rats, there being no other quadruped, nor any serpent. But the sea supplies 

 them with great variety of most excellent fish, to eat which is their chief luxury, and to 

 catch it their principal labour. 



1065. The remaining Polynesian Islands of the southern hemisphere are, for the most 

 part, inhabited by savages, and are without agriculture. 



