784 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
green foliage and dark rocks. Excellent strawberries were growing in a garden just 
above the fall, and the plants were mostly in blossom, only a few fruits being ripe. The 
Mango trees in the same way were mostly in blossom, or with young green fruit. The 
orange season was just at its end. 
The stream is full of small fish {Dales malo), one of the Perch family which have 
adapted themselves entirely to a fresh water life, and rise to a fly like trout. Captain 
Thomson and other officers of the Expedition who were anglers, got out their fly 
rods and whipped the stream, catching a few dozen. The stream falls over the rocks 
and stones in small runs and stickles just like a trout stream, and the fish thrive in the 
rapid water. 
The first camp of the excursion party was made in the head of Fataua Valley, at a height 
of about 1600 feet, amongst the “Fei” or Wild Plantain ( Musa troglodytarum, Linn), 
a species which occurs also in Fiji and elsewhere in Polynesia according to Seemann, though 
it is possible that the fruit of the wild plant in other places is not equal in quality to that 
of Tahiti. The plant is closely similar in appearance to an ordinary large banana tree, but 
the large bunches of fruit, instead of hanging down, stand up erect from the summit of 
the stem and are bright yellow when ripe. When a bunch of these is thrown into a 
fire, the outer skin of the fruits becomes blackened and charred, but when it is peeled off' 
with a pointed stick, a yellow floury interior is reached, which resembles a mealy potato, 
and is most excellent eating. This is one of the very few plants which, growing spontane- 
ously, and in abundance, affords a really good and sufficient source of food to man. 
Hardly any improvement could be wished for in the fruits by cultivation. It could not 
but be most advantageous that the plant should be introduced into many other tropical 
countries. On the way up the valley numerous natives were met going down to Papiete 
with loads of “ Fei.” 
Rats live in the mountains, and climb up and devour the ripe , plantains, and the 
groves of the trees are traversed in all directions by the tracks of wild pigs, which like- 
wise feed on the fruit. It is strange that the pig should run wild and thrive, under such 
widely different conditions as it does, and should be able to exist equally well on wild 
plantains in the warm Tahiti, and on penguins and petrels in the chilly Crozets. In 
this power of adaptation it approaches man. 
It had been raining heavily during the first day’s walk, and was still pouring when 
the halt was made,' and the members of the party were all wet through. The guides soon 
built a small waterproof hut, with sticks and the huge wild plantain leaves. Then they 
put up another small roof of leaves, and finding dry dead plantain leaves under the 
shelter of the freshly fallen ones, soon lighted a fire under the roof, and the clothes of 
the party were dried in the smoke before nightfall, in the midst of the heavy rain. The 
banana leaves afforded further excellent waterproof covers for clothes and botanical 
drying paper. No blankets had been taken by the party, because it was wished to make 
