The trade of the islands of the South Pacific was, as previously stated, always regarded in Europe as a most valuable one; and when in 1711 a monopoly of trade with South America and the Pacific Islands was granted to the South Sea Company in England, its riches were popularly looked upon as illimitable and the shares of the South Sea Company stood at one time at a premium of 900 per cent.
The bursting of the "South Sea Bubble," however, was the end of monopolies until the era of the German firm, whose agents gained a preponderance even in Fiji.
The principal article of Samoan trade is copra, and the value of land is assessed according to its growth of cocoa-nuts.
The trade was eminently suited for Germans, as the natives readily bartered for cheap and flashy goods "made in Germany."
In the vicinity of Apia uncultivated land is worth from £15 to £25 an acre, and cultivated land planted with cocoa-nuts from £20 to £40; while "bush" land faced a value ranging from 8s. to £2.
In addition to palm-oil and copra, Samoa yields the usual tropical products of cocoa, coffee, tobacco and rubber, as well as vegetable ivory.
From Samoa the export of copra in 1912 amounted to £200,000, and owing to the increased utility found for copra and its steady rise in price during recent years, further planting has energetically proceeded, though somewhat interfered with by the appearance of the rhinoceros beetle.
The pest seems to have been introduced in baskets of earth in which rubber stumps were packed, and soon obtained a firm hold upon the plantations, though the Samoan Government has made strenuous efforts to extirpate it.
"The larvae usually proceeding from eggs deposited in decayed cocoa-nut stumps are found in large quantities six to twelve inches beneath the soil, in masses of rubbish, where they gradually transform themselves into beetles. On coming to the surface they fly from tree to tree and feed on the leaves, especially on the centre leaf of the cocoa-nut palm—the heart of the tree—which, being eaten up, the tree dies. The eggs, it is said, are always deposited by the beetles above the ground, and turn into caterpillars, which, boring their way through loose soil and rubbish, then become larvae."[H]
Rubber is of comparatively recent introduction into Samoan production, and only amounted to £646 in 1911.