THE COW OF TREES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3414, 20 August 1919, Page 59

THE COW OF TREES.

Stevenson once called the cocoanut "the giraffe of trees." In an article contributed to the Pacific Marine Review (June), Andrew Farrell to the metaphor as superficial. Intrinsically, he says, it is nothing of the sort. It is the cow of trees. In the South Seas a cocoa-nut-grove is as a herd of beef cattle to us. Since white men first went to the islands they have traded for copra, the dried meat of the mature nut; of late the trade in copra and cocoanut oil has grown amazingly, especially to San Francisco and Seattle, but oven to-day few can define "copra," and still fewer know anything of its manufacture. He goe3 on: " Within that broad belt of sea included between the two tropics and stretching from America to Asia, the cocoanut almost invariably is found. There are few islands so poor and sun-etricken as to afford none. The botanist's explanation is simple : The tough outer husk and fibre, as well as the covering of the nut proper, formed an admirable armour against the salt water, so that the cocoanut, through thousands of years, was spread by ocean currents to every land on which it could thrive. And thrive it does, even with its roots in the sea, if only it is not exposed to cold winds and, to drought, for, although it may endure the salt, it must have fresh water. " Nothing has, and apparently nothing can, supplant copra as the premier product of most of the islands. During the last 100 years, since the whites ,first knew of the islands commercially, cocoanut oil and copra have flowed steadily into occidental markets from virtually every tropical group. There have been other notable products: Hawaii long ago was denuded of its sandalwood; Perirhyn relies more upon pearl-shell than upon copra; elsewhere beach-la-mar for the Chinese market is gathered from the lagoon beaches, but, on the whole, copra has first place. In many atolls which lack beach-la-mar and pearl nothing else of commercial value is produced. "Every pound *of copra brought into the ports of San Francisco and Seattle from the South Seas may have a pathetic little story behind it. The native always is between the devil of his appetite and the deep sea of desire for white man's goods. He cannot eat his cocoanut and make copra of it, manifestly, but—- " However, not all are eaten. It is only the mature nut that becomes copra, because the oil content of the green nuts is relatively small and the meat thin. So these hard, ill-flavoured, aged nuts that no' native would eat from choice, yet rich in that most remarkable vegetable oil, are denuded of their fibrous husk that defies the inexperienced white man, but yields readily to a' sharpened stick in the hands of "the native. Then they are split, the meat removed and dried in the hot tropical sun. Two nuts have gone to make lib of dry copra. '' The mature nut is roughly one-third water, one-third oil, and one-third solid matter. The water having been evaporated, one-half the dried copra is oil, and probably the finest vegetable oil of the world." v What the cocoanut means to the native, wr Farrell goes on to say, scarcely can be exaggerated. He makes thatch of the leaves. In some islands he wears a skirt of shredded leaf. Cocoanut sennit is his cord. In most low islands, where the water is brackish and undrinkable, he depends on the milk of a green nut, or, better, the sap of a tightly-bound bud. Fermented, this become cocoanut toddy, and, boiled, it is a brown, sweet sirrup beverage. When the islander dances or goes about in the rain he anoints his body with cocoanut oil. And every drop takes its toll from the copra-prodiiction. To quote further: "To manufacture the oil for his own use, the native shreds the mature nut into fine bits and expresses the juice by torsion in the fine, gauze-like stuff taken from the base of the tree fronds. This cream is boiled over a slow fire, perfumed with sweet-smelling woods. "The metaphor of 'the cow of trees,' indeed, is apt. Mothers feed the expressed juice of the nut to infants for a day or two after birth, and instances are _ known of children who feed for 18" months on nothing else than this rich, chalk-white, creamy fluid. Meat of the young nut is a delicious custard. Fresh toddy has a certain lactic taste, which, on fermentation, becomes pronounced, as though it were slightly soured milk. " Half a century and more ago the first copra plantations managed by white men for their own profit arose in the South Seas. The principal consumers have been steadily enlarging their holdings since. Whole islands, usually atolls, are owned by British companies, which employ native labour at low wages. How long the native will be satisfied with his wage, particularly when he pays white men's prices for white men's goods, is an interesting conjecture. Moreover, the virtual certainty of periodical droughts, such as, for example, beset the equatorial atolls two years ago, and the increased cost of operating vessels to these out-of-the-way islands, are factors that will make for higher prices henceforth. As it is, the native himself (the independent producer on his own lands, that is) receives only a small portion of the European price. At a time when copra was worth 200dol a ton in London the native was receiving about 40dol, or, perhaps, less, from the white or Chinese trader."