280 A MISSION TO VITI. 
number of cocoa-nuts withdrawn from consumption by 
a primitive and wasteful method of making oil for ex- 
portation, and cultivating, comparatively speaking, only 
a few acres of ground, than by the almost endless series 
of vegetable productions—an enumeration of which 
forms the subject of the succeeding pages. 
Colonial produce, properly so called, such as sugar, 
coffee, tamarinds, and tobacco, may be expected from 
Fiji in considerable quantities, as soon as Europeans 
shall have devoted their attention to the subject; since 
the plants yielding them, long ago introduced, flourish 
so well, that a judicious outlay of capital might prove a 
profitable investment. The sugar-cane (Saccharum offi- 
cinarum, Linn.), called Dovu in Fijian, grows, as it were, 
wild in various parts of the group, and a purple variety, 
attaining sixteen feet high and a corresponding thick- 
ness, is cultivated to some extent. No foreigners have 
as yet set up mills, nor are the natives at present ac- 
quainted with the process of making sugar ; they merely 
chew the cane, and employ the juice for sweetening 
their puddings. In the greater part of the group the 
leaves are used for thatching the roofs of houses; it is 
only in Lakeba and others of the eastern islands where 
those of a screw-pine (Pandanus odoratissimus, Linn.) 
are preferred, whilst those of the Boreti (Acrostichum 
aureum, Linn.), a common seaside fern, are still less 
frequently used, though in the central islands they, in 
common with those of the Makita (Parinarium laurinum, 
A. Gray), supply the chief materials for covering the 
side walls of houses, churches, and temples. Coffee 
(Coffea arabica, Linn.) will one day rank amongst the 
