POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
453 
through the medium of commerce with Port Jackson 
and England 5 and they could only procure these 
articles, in a degree equal to that in which they mul¬ 
tiplied the productions of the soil, so as to be able to 
exchange them for the manufactured goods of civilized 
countries. 
None of the spontaneous productions of the islands 
were available for purposes of barter or exportation. 
The sandal-wood of the Sandwich Islands, and the pine- 
timber of New Zealand, produced without effort on 
the part of the inhabitants, being valuable commodities, 
and given in exchange for the articles conveyed by 
foreign vessels to their shores, afforded great induce¬ 
ments to commercial adventure, and furnished the natives 
of those countries with facilities for increasing their 
resources and their comforts, of which the Tahitians 
were destitute. Whatever articles of export they could 
ever expect to furnish, must be the product of their 
own industry; this we were desirous to direct in 
channels the most profitable, such as were best suited 
to their means, and congenial to their previous habits. 
We therefore recommended them to direct their at¬ 
tention to the culture of cotton, one variety of which 
appeared to be an indigenous plant in most of the 
islands. Several valuable kinds of cotton having been 
at different times introduced, were also growing re¬ 
markably well. 
Soon after we reached Huahine, a number of those 
who accompanied us from Eimeo, with some of the chiefs 
of the island, united in clearing and fencing a large piece 
of ground, which they planted with the best seeds they 
could procure, and called aua vavae, cotton-garden. 
The females were the most active in this work. Whether 
