Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/117

Rh We were happily not expected to partake of the national cakes, made of putrid bread-fruit. I told you how, in Fiji, vast stores of bananas are buried in pits, and there left for months to ferment, after which the pits are opened, and the pestilential odour that nearly poisons the unaccustomed nose, announces a great feast of mandrai—i.e., bread. In Samoa, bananas abound all the year round, so there is no need to store them. But bread-fruit is only in season for about six months, so the surplus crop is stored in pits lined with banana-leaves; of course it soon ferments, but in that condition is preserved, perhaps, for years, as the older it is, the more highly it is prized. You can perhaps imagine how fearful is the smell of this dainty. But it is all a matter of taste—the ripe Stilton cheese, dear to the fine old English gentleman, is, to a Samoan, infinitely more revolting than his unfragrant cakes are to us.

Our surroundings were beautiful. Far below us lay the blue Pacific with its white breakers and many tinted coral-reefs, and on every side the spurs and ravines of great green hills, all densely clothed with richest tropical vegetation,—huge eevie trees, with roots like coils of twisted snakes, and branches all bearded with long grey lichen, falling in streamers and entangled by the twining vines; while all manner of parasitic plants, orchids, and bird's-nest ferns, nestle in every crevice. We had come by a lovely path through groves of bread-fruit and bananas, oranges, and other flowering trees, with here and there patches of cultivation—tall sugar-canes and maize—then tree-ferns, matted with purple convolvulus, and with an undergrowth of soft green grass. The gleaming sunlight found its way through that leafy canopy, and its dancing rays checkered the cool dark shadows with flecks of golden green. It was all soft, and lovely, and peaceful.

Ere the fragments of the feast, and the coffee-pots, and the crockery, were repacked, the brief tropical day was done, and the setting sun changed the broad blue waters into molten gold. Then we retraced our way through the forest, no longer sunlit, but sombre and very still, save for the sound of our own voices. But due provision had been made for the darkness; and many friends