You ride in a German plantation and see no bush, no soul stirring; only acres of empty sward, miles of cocoa-nut alley: a desert of food.

In the eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday schoolboy, of a granary for mice.

We must add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house, for over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal.

For the Samoan besides, there is something barbaric, unhandsome, and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to send it from the land and sell it.

A man at home who should turn all Yorkshire into one wheatfield, and annually burn his harvest on the altar of Mumbo-Jumbo, might impress ourselves not much otherwise.