Taken from the heart of the tree, it was of a deep, rich scarlet, traced with yellow veins, and in some places clouded with hazel.
In the same grove with the regal "AH" you may see the beautiful flowering "Hotoo"; its pyramid of shining leaves diversified with numberless small, white blossoms.
Planted with trees as the valley is almost throughout its entire length, I was astonished to observe so very few which were useful to the natives: not one in a hundred was a cocoa-nut or bread-fruit tree.
But here Tonoi again enlightened me.

In the sanguinary religious hostilities which ensued upon the conversion of Christianity of the first Pomaree, a war-party from Tahiti destroyed (by "girdling" the bark) entire groves of these invaluable trees.

For some time afterwards they stood stark and leafless in the sun; sad monuments of the fate which befell the inhabitants of the valley..