30 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



is one of the fabrics for the titi, or native kilt. These leaves 

 readily take a dye, and patterns of red, white and black, have of 

 old figured in the mats and dresses. The aerial roots were in 

 other atolls of the Ellice chewed* into fibre for the titi. " It is 

 believed to attain to a great age. . . I have seen the veritable 

 screw-pine on which Mautara, some hundred and fifty years ago, 

 disembowelled Kikau in revenge for the murder of his son 

 Teuanuku. The tree was uprooted in the cyclone of 1860, or it 

 might well have lived on for many a long year."f 



A different Pandanus from the wild one is cultivated near the 

 village, it has a sweeter fruit, twice as large as the indigenous 

 species, longer, broader leaves, and stouter stem. The natives 

 call it the Fala kai, edible Screw Pine, and they told me that it 

 had been introduced from the Gilbert Islands. This is probably 

 the species mentioned by the Rev. S. J. Whitmee, who writes of 

 Peru :| " The natives appear to value the Pandanus even more 

 than the cocoanut palm. They consume immense quantities of 

 the fruit raw, and the variety which they cultivate in the Gilbert 

 Group (which is much superior to that found in the Ellice Islands, 

 and immeasureably superior to the kind cultivated in Samoa) 

 produces a very palatable fruit. The women prepare a kind of 

 cake by baking the fruit till it becomes soft ; they then pound a 

 large number in a large mat, and spread the prepared pulp in 

 cakes two or three feet wide by six or eight long, and one-sixth 

 of an inch thick. The whole is then dried in the sun, and made 

 into a roll like an ancient manuscript. This keeps for a length 

 of time and tastes something like old dates." 



" In the Line Islands, during frequent seasons of drought, when 

 the cocoanut palm ceases to bear fruit, the natives contrive to 

 exist upon fish and the drupes of the never failing screw pine. 

 The inner part of the drupe is fleshy and pleasantly sweet. 

 Several tiny kernels, in extremely hard shells, fill up the outer 

 part. On many of the Gilbert Islands preparations of the 

 Pandanus were presented to us, as the most valuable gifts they 

 could bestow. First, the ripe fleshy parts of the drupe, pounded 

 into a flat cake, in appearance like a mass of pressed oakum ; 

 this we could not eat. Next came extremely thin, paper like 

 stuff, consisting of the sugary juice of the fruit dried in the sun ; 

 this was very palatable. Lastly came a sort of sawdust, or fine 

 nutritious particles out of the kernel and drupe dried ; this too 



* In the New Hebrides the petticoat worn by women find girls is pre- 

 pared from the exposed roots of the Pandanus by splitting and chewing 

 them. Gill Jottings from the Pacific, 1885, p. 186. 



t Gill loc. tit., p. 187. 



J Whitmee A Missionary Cruise iu the South Pacific, Sydney, 1871, 

 p. 36. 



