28 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



that even if the profit is good, many, and per- 

 haps most people, prefer to go elsewhere and 

 pay more. Now mark carefully : If you should 

 find that the surface growth has been eradi- 

 cated by hurricanes, and if you learn that these 

 occur frequently in the localities you have 

 marked out, then strike your tent and proceed 

 elsewhere, for you are in the cyclone-belt, 

 where the labour and care of many years 

 may be swept away and utterly annihilated 

 in half an hour. It is true that these destructive 

 gales are of small radius, and like lightning 

 (so it is erroneously claimed) may not strike in 

 the same place twice for many years, but years 

 pass quickly, and there is always the awful 

 risk, so that the careful investor is better away 

 from it, for even one visitation in a lifetime is 

 more than most men want. These hurricanes, 

 or cyclones rather, occur in belts, and their 

 zone of activity is better defined in some 

 regions than in others. Speaking in a general 

 sense, those regions lying between the i3th 

 and 1 8th degrees of latitude on both sides of 

 the Equator are the most frequently and dis- 

 astrously visited by cyclones. In some localities 

 they recur almost every third or fourth year 

 with ominous regularity. 



Earthquakes also now and then play wide- 

 spread havoc, and these are most to be feared 

 in the Molucca Seas, where the extensive 

 volcanic systems of Java and the Flores Sea, 

 &c., exist and make merry to mankind's 



