Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/104

 Y8 FIJI AISD THE FIJIANS. which, with the addition of proper care, would yield a considerahle and remunerative overplus for commerce. Many valuable products of other countries, greatly in demand at home, are already found wild and un- cared for in Fiji, or might be introduced with certain success. Arrow- root has already been mentioned. Cotton of superior quality, grows without attention, and might be cultivated to a very large extent. Many parts of the group are peculiarly adapted for coffee ; and, through- out, tobacco of the finest kind could be produced. Sugar-canes, with but imperfect attention, already flourish ; and rice might, perhaps, be grown in the broad swampy flats of the larger islands. There is good reason to hope that the enlightened enterprise of a better class of white settlers will, ere long, serve to develop the indigenous resources of Fiji, as well as to introduce, on an important scale, other valuable produce. The perils which have hitherto attended a residence among this people, have, in many of the islands, already gone ; and, in the rest, are giving way to the better influences of Christianity. This chapter may be fitly closed by an attempt to give a compendi- ous view of the Fijian year, which has no distinctly marked seasons analogous to those of more temperate climes. And fruits and blossoms blush in social sweetness On the self-same bough." January. — A few early yams dug. Bananas planted. Old bananas plentiful. Ivi-nuts and a few wis come in. February. — Wis and ivis plentiful. Dawa ripe. " First-fruit " of yams offered. Men fishing for turtle. Women making ivi-bread. Sugar-cane planted. March. — Yams ripe, and yam-stores built. Oranges ripe. New leaf of the ivi puts out. Turtle-fishing. Torrents of rain, with thunder and lightning. Native name, vulai hotahota^ i. e., " the month when leaves are dry." April. — Turtle-fishing. Yams dug. Oranges, shaddocks, and kavikas ripe. House-building. March and April are the native vulai kelikeli, " digging moons," and, with February, vulai tica, " rainy moons." May. — Building. Men out with vaic seine for fish. Arrow-root dug and prepared. Tarawus ripe. Yam-digging ends. New plots cleared, and a few early yams set. June. — Oranges, kavikas, wis, and dawas ripe. The kawai and bolous du(T. Vau seine in use.
 * For here great spring greens all the year,