Omoo By Herman Melville





















































































































 -  Alluvial flats
bordering the sea, and watered by streams from the mountains, are
over-grown with a wild, scrub guava - Page 165
Omoo By Herman Melville - Page 165 of 200 - First - Home

Enter page number    Previous Next

Number of Words to Display Per Page: 250 500 1000

Alluvial Flats Bordering The Sea, And Watered By Streams From The Mountains, Are Over-Grown With A Wild, Scrub Guava-Bush, Introduced By Foreigners, And Which Spreads With Such Fatal Rapidity That The Natives, Standing Still While It Grows, Anticipate Its Covering The Entire Island.

Even tracts of clear land, which, with so little pains, might be made to wave with orchards, lie wholly neglected.

When I considered their unequalled soil and climate, thus unaccountably slighted, I often turned in amazement upon the natives about Papeetee; some of whom all but starve in their gardens run to waste. Upon other islands which I have visited, of similar fertility, and wholly unreclaimed from their first-discovered condition, no spectacle of this sort was presented.

The high estimation in which many of their fruit-trees are held by the Tahitians and Imeeose - their beauty in the landscape - their manifold uses, and the facility with which they are propagated, are considerations which render the remissness alluded to still more unaccountable. The cocoa-palm is as an example; a tree by far the most important production of Nature in the Tropics. To the Polynesians it is emphatically the Tree of Life; transcending even the bread-fruit in the multifarious uses to which it is applied.

Its very aspect is imposing. Asserting its supremacy by an erect and lofty bearing, it may be said to compare with other trees as man with inferior creatures.

The blessings it confers are incalculable. Tear after year, the islander reposes beneath its shade, both eating and drinking of its fruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to carry his food; he cools himself with a fan platted from the young leaflets, and shields his head from the sun by a bonnet of the leaves; sometimes he clothes himself with the cloth-like substance which wraps round the base of the stalks, whose elastic rods, strung with filberts, are used as a taper; the larger nuts, thinned and polished, furnish him with a beautiful goblet: the smaller ones, with bowls for his pipes; the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are twisted into fishing-lines and cords for his canoes; he heals his wounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut; and with the oil extracted from its meat embalms the bodies of the dead.

The noble trunk itself is far from being valueless. Sawn into posts, it upholds the islander's dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and supported on blocks of stone, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material.

In pagan Tahiti a cocoa-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits which assailed them. The supreme majesty of Oro, the great god of their mythology, was declared in the cocoa-nut log from which his image was rudely carved.

Enter page number   Previous Next
Page 165 of 200
Words from 84565 to 85085 of 103097


Previous 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 Next

More links: First 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200
 Last

Display Words Per Page: 250 500 1000

 
Africa (29)
Asia (27)
Europe (59)
North America (58)
Oceania (24)
South America (8)
 

List of Travel Books RSS Feeds

Africa Travel Books RSS Feed

Asia Travel Books RSS Feed

Europe Travel Books RSS Feed

North America Travel Books RSS Feed

Oceania Travel Books RSS Feed

South America Travel Books RSS Feed

Copyright © 2005 - 2022 Travel Books Online