Along the British Pacific Cable 313 



Commercially the principal products of Fiji are sugar, 

 copra (dried cocoa-nut) and green fruit (bananas, pine- 

 apples, etc). One might be tempted to say that every- 

 thing grows or will grow in Fiji on account of the richness of 

 the soil, ample moisture and warmth. But this is not the 

 case. Its very exuberance and fertility, and want of seasons 

 of rest for nature's work, are incompatible with the successful 

 growth of grapes, apples, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, 

 potatoes and other of our common and valued products. 

 Prodigal as nature is in the tropics, it is the temperate zone 

 that products the staff of life. 



I was interested in a visit paid to a plantation where were 

 grown the vanilla bean, turmeric, allspice, coffee, tea, cacao 

 (from which chocolate is made), the cocaine plant, cotton, 

 pepper, pine-apples and ginger. It may be remarked that the 

 vanilla plant belongs to the orchids, and is trained or grown 

 on cotton trees planted for the purpose. Another peculiar 

 thing about the plant is that the flowers are not self-fertilizing, 

 and the fertilization is done by hand. Whether the introduc- 

 tion of bees would obviate this manual labor, I am not prepared 

 to say. The vanilla bean when pulled from the plant, would 

 readily pass for our long green vegetable bean. At this stage 

 it is wholly devoid of aroma. This is only developed in the 

 kilns and by a sweating process, when the alkaloid vanillin is 

 produced. 



The South Sea Islanders are essentially vegetarians, al- 

 though fish form an important part of their diet too. The 

 hunt furnishes them nothing but the wild pigeon and the duck. 

 There is no other game or wild animal. The principal food 

 of the Fijian is the yam, a big root something like our mangle, 

 as a rule though far larger. The next vegetable mostly eaten 

 is the taro, which belongs to the Arum family, and is grown 

 on very wet ground. Probably the finest tree in the South 

 Seas is the bread-fruit tree with its large, glossy, indented, 

 bright-green leaves. It will be remembered that the mission 

 of the ill-fated ship " Bounty," Captain Bligh, whose crew 

 mutinied (1789), was to gather bread-fruit trees for transplant- 

 ing to the West Indies. The bread-fruit is green, its surface 



