Note 964 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to agriculture, tillage begins early to assume an intensive, scientific character, to supply the increasing demand for food. The land, fixed in the amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by the application of intelligence and industry. Hence in island habitats, an early development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill in exploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature. In Oceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatest progress in islands like Tonga and Fiji, where climate and soil are neither lavish nor niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for the labor of tillage. The Society964 and Samoan Islands, where nature has been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though George Forster found in Tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation.965 The small, rocky, coralline Paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised. The crowded atolls of the Gilbert group show pains-taking tillage. Here we find coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, and taro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located near the lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand to the thirsty roots.966 To lonely Easter Isle nature has applied a relentless lash. At the time of Cook's visit it was woodless and boatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excluded from the food supplies of the sea. Hence its destitute natives, by means of careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rocky slopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane.967