THE SAMOAN COCOANUT 17 



and even -80 feet, is smooth and bare like a mere pole support- 

 ing a head of nuts and sweeping branches. 



The trees come into bearing, in a small way, at the sixth year 

 on suitable soil, and are believed to reach the full limit of pro- 

 duction at from 15. to 20 years of age. Many groves known to 

 be 30 and 40 years of age are now bearing in undiminished 

 abundance, and they so continue to do to a great age. Persons 

 who profess to be able to determine the age of trees by the marks 

 left on the bark where the branches have successively fallen esti- 

 mate in this wa} r that many still vigorous trees are 70 and 80 

 years of age. Natives who are peculiarly intelligent in so many 

 ways, but who appear to be, for reasons not difficult to under- 

 stand, peculiarly unable to keep account of time, say that the 

 cocoanut tree will live on beyond a hundred years. In all prob- 

 ability they live to a considerably greater age on the beach 

 lands when the trunk has escaped serious injury. 



Springs, while frequently met with, are not abundant, and for 

 fresh water for all purposes reliance is had on the small streams 

 coming down from the mountains. With few exceptions, the 

 natives are not practical or provident enough to provide tanks 

 for the storage of rain water, as is universal among the whites ; 

 indeed, the formation and material of the roofs of native houses 

 would make it very difficult to catch rain water from such roofs. 

 As villages are often at considerable distances from natural sup- 

 plies of fresh water, and as these in the dry months of May, June, 

 and July often become exhausted, recourse is had to a very 

 barbarous method of supplementing the supply of fresh water. 

 Cocoanut trees nearly always incline at an angle more or less 

 oblique. On what may be termed the upper side of the tree, or 

 that opposite to the direction in which it inclines, large cup- 

 shaped notches, similar to those made in the long-leaved pine 

 for turpentine purposes, are cut. With every shower the water 

 trickles down the body of the tree ; being caught in these troughs 

 or notches, it serves to fill the cocoanut drinking shells or bottles 

 the only vessels for holding water they employ ; for, except in a 

 few instances, they are slow to adopt buckets or other containing 

 vessels common in civilized life. 



The cocoanut tree is capable of surviving a great deal of in- 

 jury ; in fact, it maintains its vigor despite such injuries as would 

 be ruinous to most trees of the temperate climes. Trees are 

 often seen nourishing in undiminished vigor, although notched 

 half through in the way described in two and even three places. 



