We reached the plane of cocoanuts, and I asked Orivie to fetch down a couple, after essaying to perform that feat myself and failing dismally besides scratching my nose and hands.  Bare feet are a requisite—­bare and tough as leather.  The Marquesans cut notches in the trees after they reach maturity, to make the climbing easier, a custom they have in many parts of Asia, but not in Tahiti.  These footholds are made every three feet on opposite sides.  They are cut shallowly, inclining downward and outward, in order not to wound the wood of the tree or to form pockets in which water would collect and rot it.  With these aids they climb with ease, using a rope of purau bark tied about the wrists, and by these they pull themselves from notch.

I have seen a child of six years reach the top of a sixty-foot tree in a minute or so, and I have seen a man or woman stop on the way, fifty feet from the earth, and light a cigarette.  Slim, fat, chiefs or commoners, all learn this knack in infancy.  Men who puff along the road because of their bulk will attain the branches of a palm with the agility of monkeys.

Orivie had no notches to assist him, but tied his ankles together with a piece of tough vine, leaving about ten inches of play, and with this band, pressed tightly against the tree, giving firm support while his arms, clasping the trunk above, drew him upward a yard at a time, he was at the crest of a fifty-foot tree in a minute, and threw down two drinking nuts.  They were as big as foot-balls and weighed about five pounds each.  We had no knife, but broke in the tops with stones, and holding up the shining green nuts, let the wine flow down our throats.  Never was a better thirst-quencher or heartener!  The hottest noon on the hottest beach, when the coral burns the feet, this nectar is cool.  After the most arduous climb, when lungs and muscles ache with weariness, it freshens strength and lifts the spirit.

By the cocoanut-grove ran a level stream shaded with pandanus, and following it, we commenced again to mount on a pathway arched by small trees, down which the stream coursed.  The cocoanuts fell away as we went up the ridge and emerged upon a tableland covered with ferns, some green and some dead and dry, carpeting the flat expanse as far as eye could see with a mat of lavender, the green and the brown melting into that soft color.

We were further on the broad roof on the mountains, in the middle now and not on the edge, so we ran and galloped and shouted.  Wild horses fled from us, and we heard the grunt of boar in the fern thickets.  The fan-palms, dwarfs, but graceful, intermingled with magnificent tree-ferns, while above them curved the huetu, the immense mountain plantain, called fei in Tahiti, where they are the bread of the people; they have ribbed, emerald leaves, as big as a man.  Feeders of dark people in many lands for thousands of years, theirs is the same golden fruit I had eaten at breakfast with Pere Olivier, three thousand feet below.  They grow only in the mountains, and the men who bring them into the villages have feet shaped like a hand spread out to its widest, with toes twisted curiously by climbing rocks and grasping roots for support.