CHAPTER LXIX.
THE COCOA-PALM WHILE the doctor and the natives were taking a digestive nap after dinner, I strolled forth to have a peep at the country which could produce so generous a meal.
To my surprise, a fine strip of land in the vicinity of the hamlet, and protected seaward by a grove of cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees, was under high cultivation.

Sweet potatoes, Indian turnips, and yams were growing; also melons, a few pine-apples, and other fruits.

Still more pleasing was the sight of young bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees set out with great care, as if, for once, the improvident Polynesian had thought of his posterity.

But this was the only instance of native thrift which ever came under my observation.

For, in all my rambles over Tahiti and Imeeo, nothing so much struck me as the comparative scarcity of these trees in many places where they ought to abound.
Entire valleys, like Martair, of inexhaustible fertility are abandoned to all the rankness of untamed vegetation.