How little we can conceive the spaces in his life that would be empty without that firm pulp, at once nutritious, sweet and fragrant!  Curry cannot be made without it, the cook cannot advance three steps in its absence, pattimars laden with it are sailing north, south, east and west, a thousand creaky wooden mills are squeezing the limpid oil out of it, a hundred thousand little earthen lamps filled with that oil are making visible the smoky darkness of hut and temple, brightening the wedding feast and illuminating the sad page over which the candidate for university honours nods his shaven head.  That oil fed lighthouses of the first order and illuminated viceregal balls and durbars before paraffin and kerosene inundated the earth.  And it has other uses.  For arresting premature baldness and preventing the hair turning grey its virtues are equalled by no other oil known to us, and there is a fortune awaiting the hairdresser who can find means effectually to remove or suppress its peculiar and penetrating odour.  Joao Gomez, my faithful “boy,” did not object to the odour, and when he had been tempted to pass my comb through his raven locks as he was dusting my dressing table, I always knew it.

When the white kernel has been turned to account, the utilities of the coconut are not exhausted.  The shell, neatly bisected, makes a pair of teacups, and either of these, fitted with a wooden handle, makes a handy spoon.  Laurenco de Gama demands one or two of these inexpensive spoons to complete the furnishing of my kitchen.  As for the obstinate casing that wraps the coconut shell, it is an article of commerce.  It must first be soaked for some months in a pit on the slimy bank of the backwater, until all the stuff that holds it together in a stiff and obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres which nothing can rot.  These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all quarters of the world under the name of “coir” to make indestructible door mats and other indispensable things.  It will penetrate to every corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and stuff his mattresses.

And who shall recount a tithe of its other uses?  Of course, the nude man under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this.  He does without a mattress, and has no use for a door mat.  But he cannot do without cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost stop.  Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or tether the cow, or let down the bucket into the well?  What would all the boats do that traverse the backwater, or lie at anchor in the bay, or line the sandy beach?  From the cable of the great pattimar, now getting under weigh for the Persian Gulf with a cargo of coconuts, to the painter of the dugout, “hodee,” every yard of cordage about them is made of imperishable coir.