nd thinking
they were helping, after the manner of children in all lands when
future feasts are in preparation.

There was a time when each grove of breadfruit had its owners, who
guarded it for their own use, and even each tree had its allotted
proprietor, or perhaps several. Density of population everywhere
causes each mouthful of food to be counted. I have known in Ceylon an
English judge who was called upon to decide the legal ownership of
one 2520th part of ten cocoanut-trees. But my friends who were
filling the _popoi_ pits now might gather from any tree they pleased.
There was plenty of breadfruit now that there were few people.

Great Fern was culling from a grove on the mountain-side above my
house. Taking his stand beneath one of the stately trees whose
freakish branches and large, glossy, dark-green leaves spread
perhaps ninety feet above his head, he reached the nearer boughs with
an _omei_, a very long stick with a forked end to which was attached
a small net of cocoanut fiber. Deftly twisting a fruit from its stem
by a dexterous jerk of the cleft tip, he caught it in the net, and
lowered it to the _kooka_ on the ground by his side.

When the best of the fruit within reach was gathered, he climbed the
tree, carrying the _omei_. Each brown toe clasped the boughs like a
finger, nimble and independent of its fellows through long use in
grasping limbs and rocks. This is remarkable of the Marquesans; each
toe in the old and industrious is often separated a half inch from
the others, and I have seen the big toe opposed from the other four
like a thumb. My neighbors picked up small things easily with their
toes, and bent them back out of sight, like a fist, when squatting.

Gripping a branch firmly with these hand-like feet, Great Fern
wielded the _omei_, bringing down other breadfruit one by one,
taking great care not to bruise them. The cocoanut one may throw
eighty feet, with a twisting motion that lands it upon one end so
that it does not break. But the _mei_ is delicate, and spoils if
roughly handled.

Working in this fashion, Great Fern and his neighbors carried down
to the _popoi_ pit perhaps four hundred breadfruit daily, piling
them there to be prepared by the women. Apporo and her companions
busied themselves in piercing each fruit with a sharp stick and
spreading them on the ground to ferment over night.

In the morning, squatted on their haunches and chanting as they
worked, the women scraped t