92 Letter ITT. 
There is no sandy beach round this island, no outlying reef 
to break the force of the waves; so that when the wind blows 
strongly, the sea comes rushing upon it as if to overwhelm the 
land, and bursts into white foam upon its hard and well-worn 
sides. The flat platform of coral rock which does duty as a 
beach, rises very abruptly from the sea and stands a few feet 
above its surface; there grow cocoanut-palms in splendid 
groves, casuarinas, and a few other trees. Some distance in- 
land another rising takes place in the form of a steep cliff, 
forty or fifty feet high, beyond which the land liés in gentle un- 
dulations, covered with vegetation, wondrously luxuriant, con- 
sidering the scantiness and poverty of the soil. 
The cocoanut palm (cocos nucifera) is a wonderful and noble 
tree, and deserves greater attention at my hands than I have as 
yet given it. It appears to be endued with a power almost 
creative, it produces such magnificent results from such scanty 
material. Upon spots so bare and dry that all the other trees 
shrink from them in disdain, this palm rears its woody column, 
and its crested head often waves eighty or a ninety feet above 
the ground. From the sand, the air, the light, it draws those 
materials that its instinct prompts it to select, and these it la- 
bours with and converts, by mysterious processes, into the hard 
woody stem, the graceful leaves, the useful nuts—into oil, into’ 
sweetened water, into a fibrous matting to protect the nut 
and coarse strong cloth to strengthen the leaves. , 
The manner of its growth is wonderful. Botanists tell us 
that the palm is really an annual,—that looking at the tree 
we do not see one live whole, but the results of the lifework of 
many plants piled one above the other. The new plant shoots 
forth, waves in the sun awhile, then droops and dies, and leaves 
its hardened body for the next to mount upon. So these palm- 
tree builders work, always upward, till they reach their limit— 
for, like all things earthly, they have a limit to their growth. 
