CHAPTER XIII 



AT MINNIKOY : MEMORIALS OF A MARITIME MICROCOSM 



Of the Tree that Pays the Bills and the Rent. Boat-building in 

 all its Branches. The way Tunnies are caught. The Live Bait 

 Industry. The Social Unit : Man, Woman, and Child. Primi- 

 tive Civilisation : Appropriate Speculations on the Relativity 

 of Pleasure and Pain. The Mosquito Pest. Leprosy and 

 Sanitary Regulations against it. A glance at the Botany and 

 Zoology of Minnikoy. The way of a Surgeon-Fish in the 

 Sea. 



As in the islands of the Laccadive Archipelago, the 

 principal industry pf Minnikoy depends upon the 

 supreme and universal coconut palm, beneath whose 

 friendly shade the people dwell. The husk of the 

 nut is macerated for many months in salt water, to 

 separate the bundles of fibre ; these natural bundles 

 are then dried, beaten clean, and teased into separate 

 threads ; and these again are spun into thread, and 

 are at last twisted into rope, in the manner long 

 ago described with mediaeval simplicity by Ludovico 

 di Varthema. All this is done by women's hands, 

 the rougher work of cutting, carrying, and storing the 

 husks falling to the men's share. In due season the 

 coir and nuts are carried to the mainland — mostly to 



