94 Letter LI, 
a factory chimney, or bent in one smooth curve like a Turkish 
scimitar, and with leaves arranged round the top like those of 
a Norfolk Island pine. One of the best likenesses of the’ 
cocoanut-palm that I recollect having seen, was in a book of 
Kingsley’s on the West Indies. There the crooked stems 
and the graceful lines of the intercrossing leaves are excel- 
lently brought out. 
As almost everyone who writes about this tree gives a list of 
the uses to which its various parts may be put, I will dismiss 
this part of the subject in a few words. 
{ts wonderful power of producing, and supplying on demand 
a cool and pleasant drink, rank it at once as perhaps the most 
useful tree in a tropical climate, although as a food supplier it 
must give way to the bread-fruit. This drink is found in the 
green nuts, and, as I once said before when alluding to it as 
“bottled lemonade,” is exceedingly pleasant and refreshing. 
On Aniwa I do not know how the natives would exist without 
it, for there are no springs of fresh water on the island, and it 
is the only liquid they drink. The meat of the nut is used as 
food for the pigs and fowls, as a flavouring for native puddings, 
as a means of keeping naughty little black boys and girls in 
good humour, as an article affording to all gentle exercise of 
the jaws when not otherwise employed, and lastly, as a stand- 
by when other food fails. 
The leaves are not the least important part of the tree, for 
the natives plait them together and use the result as thatch for 
their huts, as mats to lie upon, and as bags for carrying what 
they may wish to carry. 
But I must now leave the cocoanut-palm a and return to 
the vessel, which was just coming up to the island when I last 
spoke of her. 
Our visit to this little island, and to the hospitable mis- 
sionary and his wife who reside on it, was very similar to that 
