The cocoa-palm is a peaceful, modest, virtuous tree. It prefers its own kin, but is charitable to its neighbors, irrespective of race. It towers far above the sea of less favored trees, which find in its shade protection against the burning rays of the tropic sun and the fury of the trade-winds. Proudly it stands guard at the shores of the coral-girt islands of the South Pacific, waving its lofty, fruit-laden crown, responding alike to the cool, refreshing land breezes and the humid trade-winds in the balmy air of the tropics. Peaceful and lovely is a forest of palms, where
Leaves live only to enjoy love, and throughout the forest every tree is luxuriating in affectionate embrace; palm, as it nods to palm, joins in mutual love; the poplar sighs for the poplar; plane whispers to plane, and alder to alder.
CLAUDIANUS.
The sight of a forest of cocoa-palms from a distance is imposing, a walk through it full of enchantment. Nowhere does this noble tree appear to better advantage than in Tahiti. This, the most favored of all islands, is engirdled by an almost unbroken belt of palm-forest, stretching from the very verge of the ocean to the base of the foot-hills, with the towering, tree-clad mountains for a background; a forest planted by the invisible hand of Nature, a forest cared for by Nature, a forest which produces nearly all of the necessities of life for the natives from day to day, and year to year, with unfailing regularity. Enter this forest and the eye feasts on a scene which neither the pen of the most skilled naturalist nor the brush of the ablest landscape artist can reproduce with anything that would do justice to nature's inexhaustible resources and artistic designs. Such a scene must be gazed upon to be appreciated. Between the colonnade of symmetrical silvery stems and crowns of feathery fronds, inlaid with the ponderous golden fruit, the eye catches glimpses of the blue, placid ocean, the foam-crested breakers, of the still more beautifully blue dome of the sky, the deep green carpet of the unbroken tropic forest thrown over the mountainsides, or the naked, rugged, brown peaks basking in the sunlight, and on all sides flowers of various hues and most delicate tints. Surely,
Who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast.
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers,
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill.
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows?
THOMSON.
Add to the pleasures flashed upon the mind by the ravished eye, the perfumed, soothing air of the tropics, the sweet sounds of the aeolian harp as the gentle breeze strikes its well-timed chords in the fronded crowns of the palms overhead, the bubbling of the ripples of the near-by ocean as they kiss the sandy rim of the island shore, and the clashes of the breakers as they strike with unerring regularity the coral reef, the outer wall of the calm lagoon, and your soul will be in a mood to join the poet in singing the praises of nature:
O Nature!
Enrich me with knowledge of thy works:
Snatch me to heaven!
THOMSON.
Queen of the tropic isles, guardian of their sun-kissed strands, friend of their dusky, simple children of Nature! Continue in the future as you have done in the past, to dispense your work of generosity and unselfish charity, to sustain and protect the life of man and beast in a climate you love and revere, a climate adverse for man to earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow! I have seen your charms in your favorite island-abode and studied with interest your innumerable deeds of generosity, your full storehouse for the urgent needs of man and your safe refuge for the inhabitants of the air. Had Whittier visited the island Paradise, your native home, he would have written in the positive in the first stanza, when he framed that beautiful verse:
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I can not drift
Beyond His love and care!
There is no other country and no other island in the world that has such a variety of indigenous fruit trees as Tahiti. Add to these trees that have furnished the natives with an abundance of fruit for centuries, the fruit trees that have been introduced since the island was discovered, and many of which flourish now in a wild state in the forests, and it will give some idea concerning the wealth of fruit to be found in the forests of Tahiti. Most of the inland habitations away from the coast have been abandoned long ago, and in all these places, in the valleys and high up on the mountainsides, many kinds of exogenous fruit trees, planted by former generations, have gained a permanent foothold. Here they multiply, blossom, ripen their fruit, and all the islanders have to do is to gather the annual crop. Here delicious little thin-skinned oranges grow, and the finest lemons and limes can be had for the gathering. The poor find here
Fruits of all kinds in coat
Rough or smooth rind, or bearded husk or shell,
She gathers tribute large, and on the board
Heaps with unsparing hand.
MILTON.