“My savee plenty Lord helpee you,” said he.  “Allee samee, him hell to live when poor.  Him Lord catchee Chile money, my givee fitty dolla churchee.”

He sighed despairingly, and fed more cocoa-husks to his make-shift oven.  The shower had passed, moving in a gray curtain down the valley, and picking my way through the mire of the yard, I followed it in the sunshine.

My way led now through the cocoanut-groves that day and night make the island murmurous with their rustling.  They are good company, these lofty, graceful palms, and I had grown to feel a real affection for them, such as a man has for his dog.  Like myself, they can not live and flourish long unless they see the ocean.  Their habit has more tangible reason than mine; they are dependent on air and water for life.  The greater the column of water that flows daily up their stems and evaporates from the leaves, the greater the growth and productivity.

Evaporation being in large measure dependent on free circulation of air, the best sites for cocoanut plantations are on the seashore, exposed to the winds.  They love the sea and will grow with their boles dipped at high tide in the salt water.

These trunks, three feet in diameter at the base and tapering smoothly and perfectly to perhaps twelve inches at the top, are in reality no more than pipes for conveying the water to the thirsty fronds.  Cut them open, and one finds a vast number of hollow reeds, held together by a resinous pitch and guarded by a bark both thick and exceedingly hard.  There is no branch or leaf except at the very tip of the trunk, where a symmetrical and gigantic bouquet of leaves appears, having plumes a dozen feet long or more, that nod with every zephyr and in storms sway and lash the tree as if they were living things.

I used to wonder why these great leaves, the sport of the idlest breeze as well as the fiercest gale, were not torn from the tree, but when I learned to know the cocoanut palm as a dear friend I found that nature had provided for its survival on the wind-swept beaches with the same exquisite attention to individual need that is shown in the electric batteries and lights of certain fishes, or in the caprification of the fig.  A very fine, but strong, matting, attached to the bark beneath the stalk, fastened half way around the tree and reaching three feet up the leaf, fixes it firmly to the trunk but gives it ample freedom to move.  It is a natural brace, pliable and elastic.

There is scarcely a need of the islander not supplied by these amiable trees.  Their wood makes the best spars, furnishes rafters and pillars for native houses, the knee- and head-rests of their beds, rollers for the big canoes or whale-boats, fences against wild pig, and fuel.  The leaves make screens and roofs of dwellings, baskets, and coverings, and in the pagan temples of Tahiti were the rosaries or prayer-counters, while on their stiff stalks the candlenuts are strung