{"id":"01KG8AKW3HZAYPPZ4VDET6V86B","cid":"bafkreid2buknswm35tqorwh4qqnzcra7ylhywzria6zceuabv4wjqrxrwq","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":9478,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:15.153Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 3","source_file":"01KG89J1H7Y803CZ7X80F0QFHZ","start_line":9407,"text":"How different from the volatile Polynesian in this, as in all other\r\nrespects, is our grave and decorous North American Indian. While the\r\nformer bestows a name in accordance with some humorous or ignoble\r\ntrait, the latter seizes upon what is deemed the most exalted or\r\nwarlike: and hence, among the red tribes, we have the truly patrician\r\nappellations of “White Eagles,” “Young Oaks,” “Fiery Eyes,” and “Bended\r\nBows.”\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER LXIX.\r\nTHE COCOA-PALM\r\n\r\n\r\nWhile the doctor and the natives were taking a digestive nap after\r\ndinner, I strolled forth to have a peep at the country which could\r\nproduce so generous a meal.\r\n\r\nTo my surprise, a fine strip of land in the vicinity of the hamlet, and\r\nprotected seaward by a grove of cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees, was\r\nunder high cultivation. Sweet potatoes, Indian turnips, and yams were\r\ngrowing; also melons, a few pine-apples, and other fruits. Still more\r\npleasing was the sight of young bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees set out\r\nwith great care, as if, for once, the improvident Polynesian had\r\nthought of his posterity. But this was the only instance of native\r\nthrift which ever came under my observation. For, in all my rambles\r\nover Tahiti and Imeeo, nothing so much struck me as the comparative\r\nscarcity of these trees in many places where they ought to abound.\r\nEntire valleys, like Martair, of inexhaustible fertility are abandoned\r\nto all the rankness of untamed vegetation. Alluvial flats bordering the\r\nsea, and watered by streams from the mountains, are over-grown with a\r\nwild, scrub guava-bush, introduced by foreigners, and which spreads\r\nwith such fatal rapidity that the natives, standing still while it\r\ngrows, anticipate its covering the entire island. Even tracts of clear\r\nland, which, with so little pains, might be made to wave with orchards,\r\nlie wholly neglected.\r\n\r\nWhen I considered their unequalled soil and climate, thus unaccountably\r\nslighted, I often turned in amazement upon the natives about Papeetee;\r\nsome of whom all but starve in their gardens run to waste. Upon other\r\nislands which I have visited, of similar fertility, and wholly\r\nunreclaimed from their first-discovered condition, no spectacle of this\r\nsort was presented.\r\n\r\nThe high estimation in which many of their fruit-trees are held by the\r\nTahitians and Imeeose—their beauty in the landscape—their manifold\r\nuses, and the facility with which they are propagated, are\r\nconsiderations which render the remissness alluded to still more\r\nunaccountable. The cocoa-palm is as an example; a tree by far the most\r\nimportant production of Nature in the Tropics. To the Polynesians it is\r\nemphatically the Tree of Life; transcending even the bread-fruit in the\r\nmultifarious uses to which it is applied.\r\n\r\nIts very aspect is imposing. Asserting its supremacy by an erect and\r\nlofty bearing, it may be said to compare with other trees as man with\r\ninferior creatures.\r\n\r\nThe blessings it confers are incalculable. Year after year, the\r\nislander reposes beneath its shade, both eating and drinking of its\r\nfruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into\r\nbaskets to carry his food; he cools himself with a fan platted from the\r\nyoung leaflets, and shields his head from the sun by a bonnet of the\r\nleaves; sometimes he clothes himself with the cloth-like substance\r\nwhich wraps round the base of the stalks, whose elastic rods, strung\r\nwith filberts, are used as a taper; the larger nuts, thinned and\r\npolished, furnish him with a beautiful goblet: the smaller ones, with\r\nbowls for his pipes; the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are\r\ntwisted into fishing-lines and cords for his canoes; he heals his\r\nwounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut; and with the\r\noil extracted from its meat embalms the bodies of the dead.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 3"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJMWJ4YQ4MFXKN10F0MX9","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1H7Y803CZ7X80F0QFHZ","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKW3HZZCHBHXZGWKZVVMA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKW3VY7EB77QEAXR51ZA1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.545Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:31.768Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}