Note 12 — Chapter X · CONDITIONS OF LIFE ON THE ISLAND

“I will only add this one word about the curious way in which they get fresh water on some of the coral islands, such as Nangone, where there is none on the surface. Two go out together to sea, and dive down at some spot where they know there is a fresh-water spring, and they alternately stand on one another’s backs to keep down the one that is drinking at the bottom before the pure water mixes with the surrounding salt water.”—“Notes on the Maoris and Melanesians,” Bishop of Wellington: The Journal of the Ethnological Society, New Series, vol. i, session 1868–9.