ranged alternately on each side. But what seemed to us the most
wonderful thing about it was a curious substance resembling cloth,
which was wrapped round the thick end of the stalk, where it had
been cut from the tree. Peterkin told us that he had the greatest
difficulty in separating the branch from the stem, on account of
this substance, as it was wrapped quite round the tree, and, he
observed, round all the other branches, thus forming a strong
support to the large leaves while exposed to high winds. When I
call this substance cloth I do not exaggerate. Indeed, with regard
to all the things I saw during my eventful career in the South
Seas, I have been exceedingly careful not to exaggerate, or in any
way to mislead or deceive my readers. This cloth, I say, was
remarkably like to coarse brown cotton cloth. It had a seam or
fibre down the centre of it, from which diverged other fibres,
about the size of a bristle. There were two layers of these
fibres, very long and tough, the one layer crossing the other
obliquely, and the whole was cemented together with a still finer
fibrous and adhesive substance. When we regarded it attentively,
we could with difficulty believe that it had not been woven by
human hands. This remarkable piece of cloth we stripped carefully
off, and found it to be above two feet long, by a foot broad, and
we carried it home with us as a great prize.

Jack now took one of the leaflets, and, cutting out the central
spine or stalk, hurried back with it to our camp. Having made a
small fire, he baked the nuts slightly, and then pealed off the
husks. After this he wished to bore a hole in them, which, not
having anything better at hand at the time, he did with the point
of our useless pencil-case. Then he strung them on the cocoa-nut
spine, and on putting a light to the topmost nut, we found to our