A LOST FEBRUARY 



Springs at Bath and gathered our first nutmegs 

 and Otahitu apples. Day after day we made our 

 way down through palm groves, past trees and 

 bushes, to the beach, where we bathed in the warm 

 surf, cut our feet upon the coral rocks, sat upon or 

 examined the rusty, time-eaten cannon that had 

 lain exposed or half buried in the ruined fortifica- 

 tions for more than a hundred years, contemplated 

 the strange and curious forms of vegetable Ufe, or 

 watched the peUcans diving, and the fiddler crabs 

 " scrapping " upon the shore. We talked with the 

 people at their cabin doors and watched the men 

 taking the husks from the cocoanuts as the wo- 

 men gathered them; we loitered upon the dock 

 and watched the girls and women loading the fruit 

 steamers with bananas — an endless chain of wo- 

 men and girls going from the Httle cars to the 

 steamer's side, all bearing bunches of bananas on 

 their heads, often continuing the work till past mid- 

 night, and toward the last, when tired and sleepy, 

 timing their movements to a wild musical chant. 

 They were all barefoot and rather ragged and 

 soiled, the dripping of the juice from the freshly 

 cut banana stems soon besmearing their clothes. 

 Thirty thousand bunches of the fruit were thus 

 often put on the steamer in a single night. The 

 women earned about eighteen pence each. 



One day we made an excursion on the little toy- 

 like railway out to Golden Grove, six or eight miles 

 271 



