Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 January 1877 — Concerning Cocoanuts. [ARTICLE]

Concerning Cocoanuts.

For the past two or three months a larse number of small vessels have reached this port freighted with the large cocoanut crop of the islands in the South Pacific Ocean. These nuts, which are brought in bulk in the holds of the vessels, are being stored in cellars and lofts by the consignees, preparatory to shipment to the Eastern States or consumption here by several small factories in this city engaged in grating and putting the meat up m cans and packages for household and confection purposes. With each year the demand for the coeoahat increases, and there is a possibility of the business of importing them assuming very respectable proportions. The value of the cocoanut, especially to the islanders where they

are grown, fa not generally known to the people of this country. Seven years and often more must elapse between planting and the harvest, but when once established, a cocoonut plantation is a valuable one. Ift the Hawaiian Islands the adage “ who plants a cocoanut orchard will not live to eat iu fruit” had a superstitious power that restrained men from planting the fatal tree, but that has been gradually overcome. In the. Gilbert Islands, however, there is no Buch silly superstition, and the cocoanut tree is looked upon as their faithful father and mother. It supplies their every want, so to speak. Its long green leaves, seldom less than twelve feet and often twenty from heel to point, make floor mats, mattresses, blankets, windows and even doors. The tongb mid ribs, with thepalments attached, make the largest shingles extant, and when stripped they make fishing rods, fencing lumber, floor rods, etc., while the narrow leaflets, tied in a long, cigar-shaped torch, illuminate the nights without stare and the black-blue water where the fisherman scoops up the curious flying fish. The fiber of the husk, properly twisted, gives strong material for twine and rope, be it a hair fish-line, a mainsail halyard, a canoe hawser, or a shark rope. The shell of the nut makes a hot charcoal, which is unexcelled by that of any other material. The milk is God’s gift to a thirsty land, where no rain falls eight months out of the twelve, and the springs of water are more or less salt. And right here it may be pertinent to remark that there are two milks to a cocoanut—one the natural water and the other produced by scraping the meat fine and immediately subjecting its snowy-white flakes to a violent compression. This lacteous fluid can hardly be distinguished from new milk, and answers nearly the same purpose in tea and coffee. The meat of the cocanut when young is soft as jelly, tender as cream, and as delicious as f reshly-baked custard eaten with a silver spoon. When, however, it gets hard It becomes tough and cuts —all children know how—like old cheese. In many of the Coral Islands the inhabitants have no better meat than this same cocoanut, and with a slice of it partially hardened, a gourd of its milk and a strip of dried fish, they make a very goocT~i!fi»Stt. Cocoanut oil, which is now largely manufactured and used in the manufacture of line toilet soaps, is produced by scraping the dry nut into small shavings, exposing them to the hot sun till the rancid oil begins to stew out, and then subjecting the fragrant to heavy pressure. To the island producers, this to us valuable oil is worth only ten cents per gallon, and is dull of sale even at that figure unless a trading snip is within easy reach. It takes full 100 common-sized nuts to make a gallon of this oil. To the islander, however, the most valuable product of this really wonderful tree is its sap. Without cocoanut sap the coral atolls would soon be desolate. Bjit few own land or trees, and these few, as a matter of course, own the nuts. But the ancient and undisputed law that protects the property rights in eatable cocoanuts permits the poorest slave or beggar to procure sap on the rich man’s land. This sap flows from the bud, which stands on the tree like an unhusked ear of corn swathed tightly, and to get at it the small end of this bud is cut off. The sap is swallowed when fresh ana sweet, and will, unaided, sustain life and strength. When allowed to stand and become fermented, it is transformed into a sort of cocoanut toddy, which is as vile a drink as ever brought about a riot or drunken murder. On seven islands, during the year 1875, over 100 murders were attributed to this intoxicating cause, and an islander full of the cocoanut toddy was considered by the traders to be ten times as dangerous as a San Francisco hoodlum full of whisky. It is not generally known that cocoanuts differ in shape, size and flavor, as do apples, peaches and pears. At the Hawaiian Museum, in Honolulu, can be seen pairs of cocoanuts ranging in size from small crab-apples to the shape and volume of a foot-ball. As a rule they follow the general types, the oval and the circular. The smallest of the oval type is as long as a man’s fore-finger, and not larger, and of the circular no larger than a dove’s egg. From this size they ascended to nine inches in diameter. The tree producing the small nuts reproduces itself, and the mammoth nuts of Samoa, and the marques as, are parents of the same huge nuts on E'len. Some are very sweet in milk, others actually delicious, and others again as brackish and disagreeable as can be imagined. Each tree follows its own type. In many of the coral islands are found cocoanuts with an edible husk. When green every part of it is chewed and eaten by the islanders, and when it gets tougher the juice is simply taken and the fiber thrown away like sugar-cane. In short, to the natives of the southern islands the tree fa food, drink, fuel, house, clothing, money, and the staff of life to a race who, as far as their knowledge of their origin is concerned, are abnormal and indigenous, the same as the milk in the cocoanut. The vessels engaged in the cocoanut trade make a fair profit on the amount of money invested. At the islands from 300 to 400 sound and merchantable nuts go to the traders for one dollar, when sold tor money, and by trade even more favorable terms are secured. The .nuts are sold here from six dollars to seven dollars per 100, and one vessel will bring a million or more. Sometimes, however, when the voyage is a long one, the nuts begin to sprout in the hold, and as soon as they begin to do so they are worthless. It is a curious and interesting sight to sit on one of the wharves and watch the unloading of this curious fruit. The nuts, encaseti in their tough, fibrous, brown covering, are tied together in bunches of four or five, as the case may be, by strips of fiber wrenched from the main body of the husk, and just as the natives brought them to the boat. Outside of giving children a decided pain, and the use made of them by confections, the cocoanut is beginning to be largely used in household cookery in the manufacture of pies, and. different kinds of cakes and light table confections. The bulk of the importations this year come from Tahiti, Honolulu, Mexico and South America. —Ban Franc iteo Chronicle.