Note 12 — X.

It is customary to call the liquid contents of the green, unripe cocoa-nut by the name of cocoa-nut milk; but it is rather a clear, delightfully palatable water, which neither in colour nor taste at all resembles milk. This is obtained or pressed from the white, sweet, rather hard kernel, which is itself extraordinarily nutritive, and forms the daily food of the inhabitants. For an entire month, during which we could procure neither cows' nor goats' milk, we experimented on the use of the fluid obtained from the ripe cocoa-nut in our tea and coffee, and found it so excellent that we hardly felt the privation of animal milk.