This was in the atoll of Namorik in the Marshall group,and stands alone in my experience.To give the opposite extreme,which is yet far more near the average,I will describe the soil and productions of Fakarava.The surface of that narrow strip is for the more part of broken coral lime-stone,like volcanic clinkers,and excruciating to the naked foot;in some atolls,I believe,not in Fakarava,it gives a fine metallic ring when struck.Here and there you come upon a bank of sand,exceeding fine and white,and these parts are the least productive.The plants (such as they are)spring from and love the broken coral,whence they grow with that wonderful verdancy that makes the beauty of the atoll from the sea.The coco-palm in particular luxuriates in that stern SOLUM,striking down his roots to the brackish,percolated water,and bearing his green head in the wind with every evidence of health and pleasure.And yet even the coco-palm must be helped in infancy with some extraneous nutriment,and through much of the low archipelago there is planted with each nut a piece of ship's biscuit and a rusty nail.The pandanus comes next in importance,being also a food tree;and he,too,does bravely.A green bush called MIKI runs everywhere;occasionally a purao is seen;and there are several useless weeds.According to M.Cuzent,the whole number of plants on an atoll such as Fakarava will scarce exceed,even if it reaches to,one score.Not a blade of grass appears;not a grain of humus,save when a sack or two has been imported to make the semblance of a garden;such gardens as bloom in cities on the window-sill.Insect life is sometimes dense;a cloud o'mosquitoes,and,what is far worse,a plague of flies blackening our food,has sometimes driven us from a meal on Apemama;and even in Fakarava the mosquitoes were a pest.The land crab may be seen scuttling to his hole,and at night the rats besiege the houses and the artificial gardens.The crab is good eating;possibly so is the rat;I have not tried.Pandanus fruit is made,in the Gilberts,into an agreeable sweetmeat,such as a man may trifle with at the end of a long dinner;for a substantial meal I have no use for it.The rest of the food-supply,in a destitute atoll such as Fakarava,can be summed up in the favourite jest of the archipelago -cocoa-nut beefsteak.Cocoa-nut green,cocoa-nut ripe,cocoa-nut germinated;cocoa-nut to eat and cocoa-nut to drink;cocoa-nut raw and cooked,cocoa-nut hot and cold -such is the bill of fare.And some of the entrees are no doubt delicious.
The germinated nut,cooked in the shell and eaten with a spoon,forms a good pudding;cocoa-nut milk -the expressed juice of a ripe nut,not the water of a green one -goes well in coffee,and is a valuable adjunct in cookery through the South Seas;and cocoa-nut salad,if you be a millionaire,and can afford to eat the value of a field of corn for your dessert,is a dish to be remembered with affection.But when all is done there is a sameness,and the Israelites of the low islands murmur at their manna.
The reader may think I have forgot the sea.The two beaches do certainly abound in life,and they are strangely different.In the lagoon the water shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimy sand,dotted with clumps of growing coral.Then comes a strip of tidal beach on which the ripples lap.In the coral clumps the great holy-water clam (TRIDACNA)grows plentifully;a little deeper lie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish that charmed us at our entrance;and these are all more or less vigorously coloured.But the other shells are white like lime,or faintly tinted with a little pink,the palest possible display;many of them dead besides,and badly rolled.On the ocean side,on the mounds of the steep beach,over all the width of the reef right out to where the surf is bursting,in every cranny,under every scattered fragment of the coral,an incredible plenty of marine life displays the most wonderful variety and brilliancy of hues.
