HARD TO NEGOTIATE 153 



against a dark background of pensive palms. He 

 might naturally suppose that they had grown up of 

 themselves, like the screw-pines and aloes which 

 sometimes share the beach with them ; but that 

 would be a great mistake. Everyone of them has 

 been planted and carefully watered for years and 

 manured annually with fresh foliage of forest trees 

 buried in a moat round the root. And so it grew in 

 stature, but not in girth, until its head was sixty, 

 seventy or even eighty feet above the ground, and 

 a hundred nuts of various sizes hung in bunches from 

 long, shiny, green arms, each as thick as a man's, 

 which had thrust themselves out from between the 

 lower fronds. 



There is no production of Nature that I know of 

 less negotiable than a coconut as the tree presents 

 it. The man who first showed the way into it 

 deserved a place in mythology with Prometheus, 

 Jason and other heroes of the dawn. There is a 

 crab, I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying the 

 scientific name of Birgus latro, the Burglar ; but 

 it seems to be a special invention, as big as a cat 

 and armed with two fearful pairs of pincers in front 

 for rending the outside casings of the fruits, and a 

 more delicate tool on its hindlegs for picking out 

 the meat. Other animals have to do without it, 

 as had man, I opine, in the stone and copper ages. 

 With the iron age came a chopper, called in Western 

 India a "koita," with which he can hack his way 

 through most of the obstructions of life. When, 



