372 A MISSION TO VITI. 
depth of the forest, where it shows its feathery crown 
above the surrounding trees, forming what St. Pierre 
poetically called “a forest above a forest,” and what 
the Fijians less skilfully wished to express by the name of 
Cagicake, literally “above the wind.” Before I had seen 
the fruit the natives described it to me as being exactly 
the same shape and colour as that of the Niu sawa, but 
only very much smaller in size; and in this they were 
pretty correct. Whilst the fruit of the Niu sawa is as 
large as a walnut, that of the Cagicake is about the size 
of a coffee berry. The trunk is smooth, unarmed, and 
about eight inches in diameter, furnishing capital ma- 
terial for rafters, which the natives declare are so durable 
that they last for ever. The leaves are pinnatifid, ten 
to twelve feet long, and the lowermost segments being 
narrower, and at least three or four times as long as the 
uppermost, hang down in long fringes. When in the 
dusk of the evening I first encountered this singlar palm 
on the Macuata coast of Vanua Levu, it was this pecu- 
liarity that first attracted my attention, otherwise I 
should have taken it to be a Niu sawa. It was pitch- 
dark before the tree was felled and dragged out of the 
thick jungle in which it grew, when passing my fingers 
over the surface of the segments, I felt a thick marginal 
and elevated vein, which at once assured me that an 
undoubtedly new addition had been made to my col- 
lection. The disproportionate length of the lower seg- 
ments, and the thick marginal vein pointed out, though 
they had been first discovered in the absence of regular 
daylight, are amongst the most striking peculiarities, 
and ought to be seized upon by those giving a popular 
