NAURU, THE RICHEST ISLAND IN THE SOUTH SEAS 



579 



In time of drought the natives are not 

 permitted to make copra, as the nuts are 

 needed for their own food and for seed. 



From 1914 to 191 7 there was a great 

 drought which killed thousands of trees. 

 When the rains came and the trees blos- 

 somed, the natives asked permission to 

 make copra. The administrator ordered 

 a census of the ripe coconuts, and he went 

 in person all over the island and verified 

 the count. The natives count quickly, by 

 tens. Each heap contained so many 

 hundreds. He found the total barely 

 sufficient to sustain the population until 

 the new crop ripened, so forbade the 

 making of copra. 



THE PANDANUS TREE GROWS ON STII/TS 



The gods have given to the islanders 

 another tree almost as valuable as the 

 coconut and constantly associated with it. 

 The screw pine, pandanus, is an extra- 

 ordinary tree, dependent upon crutches 

 and stilts. It starts in life as a stemless 

 plant, closely resembling yucca, with 

 sword-shaped leaves, each fitted on its 

 edges and midrib with sharp spines. A 

 little later it sends up a stout spiked trunk 

 to about ten or fifteen feet, crowned with 

 leaves like the radical leaves. It now 

 resembles a huge mop. 



Should the trunk be bent from the 

 vertical, the tree drops from the top a 

 cord with a bud at the end protected by a 

 sheath; when it reaches the ground the 

 sheath decays, the bud roots, and the 

 stiffened cord becomes a crutch. A set 

 of stout, bracing aerial roots is thrust 

 out from the lower part of the trunk, 

 the radical leaves decay and leave the tree 

 standing upon stilts. 



A straight horizontal branch is often 

 thrust out at a height of two or three 

 feet from the ground, sustained by roots 

 set at an angle on each side, resembling a 

 rustic bench, but any attempt to use it 

 as a bench is speedily abandoned, as it is 

 set with stout spines. The tree grows 

 thus with stilted roots till it covers a 

 large tract of ground. 



Pandanus leaves are used for making 

 ridis, fine mats and basket weaving, for 

 thatching huts, for calking canoes, and 

 for many other things for which coconut 

 leaves are too coarse. The tree bears an 

 orange-colored globular fruit, the size of 

 a foot-ball and larger, separable into sec- 



tions, which are chewed for the flavor, 

 as it is composed of fiber and flavor only. 

 It is also stewed and the juice made into 

 a palatable black paste. 



SCRAP IRON USED FOR FERTILIZER 



The coconut tree being of such supreme 

 importance to him, one would think the 

 native would cherish it as his wife and 

 child, but, on the contrary, he gives it no 

 attention whatever, for it grows without 

 care and lives to a great age. If he wishes 

 to plant a tree, he picks out of the heap 

 a sprouted nut, whose flattened triangular 

 husk and opening leaf, standing at right 

 angles to the long petiole, resemble the 

 body and head of a duck, sets it into a 

 shallow hole in company with a piece of 

 old iron, and leaves it uncovered. 



The proper planting of trees is done in 

 the same way, except that the holes are 

 wide and deep and placed at regular dis- 

 tances. Iron rust is beneficial to young 

 trees. The nuts are not covered with 

 earth for a year. 



In 1897 a scientific expedition from 

 Sydney landed on the island of Funafuti, 

 in the Ellice group, in order to put down 

 a bore to ascertain the depth of coral. 

 This was to test the theory of the forma- 

 tion of atolls as announced by Darwin, 

 who had said that it could be settled by a 

 core from a depth of 500 to 600 feet. 



There had been a British expedition at 

 Funafuti the previous year, which had 

 been abandoned on reaching a depth of 

 100 feet, owing to the breaking down of 

 the machinery. The engineers had 

 brought back a story of the difficulties in 

 boring coral ; that zones of extremely 

 hard rock alternated with those of sand; 

 that often the drill would strike a cave, 

 where it would twine around in space and 

 perhaps be lost in the depths. 



It was with a good deal of trouble that 

 money had been found for the second 

 expedition. The government of Xew 

 South Wales had furnished part, and pri- 

 vate contributors the remainder, so that 

 the little party felt that much depended 

 upon their success. They began drilling 

 and were only well started when a crown 

 bevel-gear wheel broke and the boring- 

 stopped, as there was none to replace it. 

 They stood around the drill in despair. 

 There would be no ship calling for three 

 months ; there was no cable or wireless 



