Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/109

Rh native cloth, and dress entirely in goods of European make. They have learned how to distil intoxicating liquor from the orange, and this delicious fruit threatens to be a curse to them instead of a blessing. They have given up tattooing, which was never practised to so great an extent as in the Marquesas; there would be no use for tattooing now, as they have all taken to wearing clothes just as in the Sandwich Islands.

"As to the products of the islands," continued Frank, "they consist principally of cocoanut-oil and coppra (the dried substance of the cocoa-nut, from which oil is extracted after its arrival in Europe), arrow-root, cotton, sugar, and mother-of-pearl shells. The cotton cultivation has not been profitable; and as to the trade in sugar, it has not been anywhere nearly so successful as in the Sandwich Islands."



"You have omitted one thing from your list of products," said Doctor Bronson, as Frank paused. "You have made no mention of beche-de-mer."

"That's so," was the reply; "but the fact is, I wanted to learn more about it than I know now."