EXTENSION OF COTTON CULTIVATION. 53 
eotton has as yet been cultivated by the natives in their 
peculiar style. Those who would look in the islands for 
broad square acres covered with any given produce will 
be seriously disappointed. The Fijian cultivator has such 
an abundance of good land at his command, and holds 
such stringent notions about the fallows to be observed, 
that he selects patches here and there only, which after 
an annual or biennial occupation, are deserted for others 
cleared for the purpose. When cotton was recom- 
mended to him, he followed his old cherished system, 
and the isolated patches now beheld are the result. 
These patches are of various sizes, but I have not seen 
any containing more than fifty plants. In Namara, and 
other districts subject to Bau, isolated specimens, often 
as many as twenty, are met with on the margins of 
every taro, banana, and yam plantation. On the island 
occupied by Bau, the Fijian capital, Mr. Storck, my 
assistant, counted four hundred shrubs, growing in the 
streets and squares. The number of plants thus dis- 
persed all over Fiji must be considerable, though no- 
body could venture to give any approximate estimate of 
them ; and their aggregate produce, if attentively col- 
lected, would doubtless amount to a quantity scarcely 
expected from such sources. My. Pritchard, in order 
to open the trade, pledged himself, before leaving Eng- 
land, to his Manchester friends, to forward 1000 Ibs. of 
cleaned cotton within twelve months’ time, and he ex- 
perienced no difficulty in obtaining from Kadavu, Na- 
droga, and Bau an amount exceeding that promised 
before the time fixed for its dispatch,—the first ever 
sent home. Now that a demand has been established, 
