CHAPTER XXIV 
FORTUNATE ISLANDS 
IN the family traditions of most: peoples there are 
usually stories of some particular Fortunate Islands 
where, in exquisite sunshine and eternal spring, an inno- 
cent and childlike people disport themselves amongst 
flowers and splendid fruit trees, earning their subsistence 
with the merest apology for labour, and redeemed by 
Nature’s exuberant fertility from that drudgery which is 
the common lot of mankind. 
The facile pens of enthusiastic, if badly informed, 
writers have discovered Utopias in the West Indian 
Islands, in the South Seas, and in the Canaries, which 
last appear to have been the original Fortunate Islands 
of the classical world. 7 
At first sight such islands within or just outside the 
tropics do seem to answer the conditions of Utopia. 
Fresh sea-breezes prevent the oppressive and exhaust- 
ing effects of ordinary tropical heat. There are often 
neither mosquitoes nor malaria. The warm transparent 
water yields an abundance of fish, and the soil is fertile 
and returns abundantly for any half-hearted attempt at 
plantation or cultivation. 
These islands are the home of the cocoanut, banana, 
mango, and often of the sago palm, the most abundantly 
productive food plants known to mankind. An acre of 
bananas will carry one thousand plants, which may give 
some 1000 to 1500 bunches in the year, which is about 
9} tons, The cocoanut is also exceedingly prolific, and 
can be used for all sorts of purposes, The bread-fruit is 
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