THE S A MO AN COCOANUT 21 



slender, swaying tree with as much ease and rapidity as if it were 

 a ladder. The notched or corrugated surface of the bark, left 

 where branches have in time grown, from the ground up, catches 

 the bit of sennet between the feet, while the weight of the body 

 pressing downward clamps, as it were, the hollow of the ample 

 feet firmly on either side of the trunk. By this means the tree 

 is ascended by a series of jumps, as it were. 



In some of the South Sea islands, whereonerous taxes are levied 

 in return for the supposed protection afforded by European na- 

 tions which have annexed them, a boy is accounted as having 

 become a man, liable to the payment of capitation tax, when he 

 is able to climb a tree. 



The climber, with a large knife, cuts awa} r the matured nuts 

 which cluster close about the butts of the branches. As the} 7 fall 

 they are gathered into piles about the base of the tree. On the 

 plantations they are gathered into panniers slung on donkeys, 

 or into baskets swung on poles borne by two men — after the 

 style in which the tea boxes were carried with ease over the per- 

 pendicular mountains by the two little Chinamen on the old 

 blue china of our grandmothers — to be finally piled into great 

 heaps near the copra shed. The nuts are not husked, the thick 

 outer husk having become hard and brown like wood. They 

 are dexterously split in two by an axe and the hard white flesh 

 is more dexterously cut out with a large knife. Nothing remains 

 but to spread it on mats or boards in the sun. When cured it is 

 thrown into a heap in the shed, where it remains until sacked, 

 to be laboriously carried, sack by sack, by wading out to the 

 small boat, which in turn transfers it to the small schooner or 

 cutter lying in deeper water, and from this in turn it is again 

 taken to be stored elsewhere or transferred to the deep-sea vessel 

 for its final voyage. 



Copra yields perhaps a greater percentage of oil than any other 

 of the great oil-producing staples, under the modern process, 

 whereby it is mixed with water, heated, and subjected to two 

 pressings, giving as high as 62 and 64 per cent of pure oil. 



The cocoanut crop of last year (1894) was by far the largest 

 ever known in the islands ; for this, like all other crops, has its 

 unaccountable } r ears of great abundance and those of small pro- 

 duction, as little understood. The yield of last year is all the 

 more remarkable when it is borne in mind that the war of 1893, 

 which ended in the deportation of Mataafa, worked a great and 

 barbarous destruction of trees in the western district of this 



