Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should confer the greatest benefit on the human race. Neptune first struck his trident on the ground (or was it on the waves? "Eheu fugaces"—no, that also is gone), and there sprang forth a noble steed, pawing the ground, terrible in war and no less useful in peace. Then the watery god leaned back and smiled as if he would say, "Now, beat that." But the Goddess of Wisdom brought out of the earth a modest, dark tree bearing olives and, in classic phrase, "took the cake," Oriental mythology is more luxuriant and fantastic than that of the West, but I do not know if it has any legend parallel to this. If it has, then I am sure the palm is awarded to the deity who gave to the human race the tree that bears the coconut.

Passing a confectioner's shop, I saw a tempting packet labelled "Cokernut Toffee." I bought a pennyworth and gave it to my little girl, and

How many boys and girls are there in this kingdom to whom the word coconut connotes an ingredient which goes to the making of a very toothsome sweetie? And how many confectioners and shop girls are there whose idea is no broader? Again:

And I said, "Little Bird, what do you know of the coconut?" And it made answer, "It is a cup full of food, rich and sweet, which kind hands hang out for me in winter," How narrow may be the key-hole through which we take our outlook on things human and divine, never doubting that we see the whole! In our own British Empire, only a few thousand miles away, sits a mild Hindu, almost unclad and wholly unlettered, to whom the tree that bore the fruit that flavoured the toffee that my little girl is enjoying seems to be one of the predominating tints of the whole landscape of life. It puts a roof over his head, it lightens his darkness, it helps to feed his body, it furnishes the wine that maketh glad his heart and the oil that causeth his face to shine, and time would fail me to tell of all the other things that it does for him. As a type and symbol, it is always about him, spanning the sunshine and shower of life with bows of hope.

The coconut tree is a palm, and has nothing to do with cocoa of the breakfast table. That word is a perversion of "cacao," and came to us from Mexico: the other is the Portuguese word "coco," which means a nut. It is what Vasco da Gama called the thing when he first saw it, and the word, with our English translation added, has stuck to it. The tree is, I need scarcely say, a palm, one of many kinds that flourish in India. But none of them can be ranked with it. The rough date palm makes dense groves on sandy plains, but brings no fruit to perfection, pining for something which only Arabia can supply; the strong but unprofitable "brab," or fan palm, rises on rocky hills, the beautiful fish-tailed palm in forests solitarily, while the "areca" rears its tall, smooth stem and delicate head in gardens and supplies millions with a solace more indispensable than tobacco or tea. But the coconut loves a sandy soil and the salt breath of the sea and the company of its own kind. The others grow erect as a mast, but the gentle coconuts lean on the wind and mingle the waving of their sisterly arms, casting a grateful shade on the humble folk who live under their blessing.

To the mariner sailing by India's coral strand that country presents the aspect of an endless beach of shell sand, quite innocent of coral, on which the surf breaks continually into dazzling white foam against a dark background of pensive palms. He might naturally suppose that they had grown up of themselves, like the screw-pines and aloes which sometimes share the beach with them; but that would be a great mistake. Everyone of them has been planted and carefully watered for years and manured annually with fresh foliage of forest trees buried in a moat round the root. And so it grew in stature, but not in girth, until its head was sixty, seventy or even eighty feet above the ground, and a hundred nuts of various sizes hung in bunches from long, shiny, green arms, each as thick as a man's, which had thrust themselves out from between the lower fronds.

There is no production of Nature that I know of less negotiable than a coconut as the tree presents it. The man who first showed the way into it deserved a place in mythology with Prometheus, Jason and other heroes of the dawn. There is a crab, I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying the scientific name of Birgus latro, the Burglar; but it seems to be a special invention, as big as a cat and armed with two fearful pairs of pincers in front for rending the outside casings of the fruits, and a more delicate tool on its hind-legs for picking out the meat. Other animals have to do without it, as had man, I opine, in the stone and copper ages. With the iron age came a chopper, called in Western India a "koita," with which he can hack his way through most of the obstructions of life. When, with this, he has slashed off the tough outer rind and the inch-thick packing of agglutinated fibres, like metal wires, he has only to crack the hard shell which contains the kernel.

How little we can conceive the spaces in his life that would be empty without that firm pulp, at once nutritious, sweet and fragrant! Curry cannot be made without it, the cook cannot advance three steps in its absence, pattimars laden with it are sailing north, south, east and west, a thousand creaky wooden mills are squeezing the limpid oil out of it, a hundred thousand little earthen lamps filled with that oil are making visible the smoky darkness of hut and temple, brightening the wedding feast and illuminating the sad page over which the candidate for university honours nods his shaven head. That oil fed lighthouses of the first order and illuminated viceregal balls and durbars before paraffin and kerosene inundated the earth. And it has other uses. For arresting premature baldness and preventing the hair turning grey its virtues are equalled by no other oil known to us, and there is a fortune awaiting the hairdresser who can find means effectually to remove or suppress its peculiar and penetrating odour. Joao Gomez, my faithful "boy," did not object to the odour, and when he had been tempted to pass my comb through his raven locks as he was dusting my dressing table, I always knew it.

When the white kernel has been turned to account, the utilities of the coconut are not exhausted. The shell, neatly bisected, makes a pair of teacups, and either of these, fitted with a wooden handle, makes a handy spoon. Laurenco de Gama demands one or two of these inexpensive spoons to complete the furnishing of my kitchen. As for the obstinate casing that wraps the coconut shell, it is an article of commerce. It must first be soaked for some months in a pit on the slimy bank of the backwater, until all the stuff that holds it together in a stiff and obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres which nothing can rot. These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all quarters of the world under the name of "coir" to make indestructible door mats and other indispensable things. It will penetrate to every corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and stuff his mattresses.

And who shall recount a tithe of its other uses? Of course, the nude man under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this. He does without a mattress, and has no use for a door mat. But he cannot do without cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost stop. Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or tether the cow, or let down the bucket into the well? What would all the boats do that traverse the backwater, or lie at anchor in the bay, or line the sandy beach? From the cable of the great pattimar, now getting under weigh for the Persian Gulf with a cargo of coconuts, to the painter of the dugout, "hodee," every yard of cordage about them is made of imperishable coir.

When the axe is at last laid to the old coconut tree, a beam will fall to the earth sixty feet in length, hard as teak and already rounded and smoothed. True, you cannot saw it into planks, but no one will complain of that in a village which does not own a saw. It cleaves readily enough and straightly, forming long troughs most useful for leading water from the well to the plantation and for many other purposes. It can also be chopped into lengths suitable for the ridge poles of the hut, or for bridges to span the deep ditches which drain the rice fields or feed the salt pans. When out in quest of snipe I have sometimes had to choose between crossing by one of those bridges, innocent of even a handrail, and wading through the black slough of despond which it spanned. Choosing neither, I went home, but the "Kolee" and the "Agree" trip over them like birds, balancing household chattels on their steady heads.

We must not think, however, of the trunk as, at the best, anything more than a by-product of the coconut tree, whose head is more than its body. Even while it lives its head is shorn once a year, for, as fresh fronds push out and upward from the centre, those of the outer circle get old and must be cut away. And when one of those feathery, fern-like fronds, toying with the breeze, comes crashing to the ground, it is ten or twelve feet long, and consists of a great backbone, as thick at the base as a man's leg, with a close-set row of swords on either side, about a yard in length. They are hard and tough, but supple yet and of a shiny green colour; but they will turn to brown as they wither.

Now observe that this gigantic, unmanageable-looking leaf, like everything else about the coconut tree, is almost a ready-made article, demanding no machinery to turn it to account, except the "koita" which hangs ever ready from the nude man's girdle. With it he will cleave the backbone lengthwise, and then, taking each half separately, he will simply twist backwards every second sword and plait them all into a mat two feet wide, eight or ten feet long, and firmly bounded and held together on one side by the unbreakable backbone. This is a "jaolee," lighter than slates, or tiles, and more handy than any form of thatch. You have just to arrange your "jaolees" neatly on your bamboo frame, each overlapping the one below it, then tie them securely in their places with coir rope and your roof is made for a year.

There is yet another benevolence of the coconut tree which I have left to the last, and the simple folk of whom I am trying to write with fellow feeling would certainly have named it first. I ought to refer to it as a curse: they, without qualm or question, call it a blessing. Let me try to describe it dispassionately. If you wander in any palm grove in Western India, looking upward, it will soon strike you that a large number of the trees do not seem to bear coconuts at all, but black earthen pots. If your visit should chance to be made early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, the mystery will soon be revealed. You will see a dusky, sinewy figure, not of a monkey, but of a man, ascending and descending those trees with marvellous celerity and ease, grasping the trunks with his hands and fitting his naked feet into slight notches cut in them. The distance between the notches is so great that his knee goes up to his chin at each step, but he is as supple as he is sinewy and feels no inconvenience. For he is a Bhundaree, or Toddy-drawer, and his forefathers have been Bhundarees since the time, I suppose, when Manu made his immortal laws.

His waistcloth is tightly girded about him, in his hand he carries a broad billhook as bright and keen as a razor, and from his caudal region depends a tail more strange than any borne by beast or reptile. It looks like a large brown pot, constructed in the middle. It is, in fact, a large gourd, or calabash, hanging by a hook from the climber's waistband. When he has reached the top of a tree, he gets among the branches and, sitting astride of one of them, proceeds to detach one of the black pots from the stout fruit stem on which it is fastened, and empty its contents into his tail. Then, taking his billhook, he carefully pares the raw end of the stem, refastens the black pot in its place and hurries down to make the ascent of another tree, and so on until his tail is full of a foaming white liquor spotted with drowned honey bees and filling the surrounding air with a rank odour of fermentation. This liquor is "toddy."

If I were a Darwin I would not leave that word until I had traced the agencies which wafted it over sea and land from the shores of Hindustan to the Scottish coast, where it first took root and, quickly adapting itself to a strange environment, developed into a new and vigorous species, spread like the thistle and became a national institution. At first it was only the Briton's way of mouthing a common native word, "tadi" (pronounced ta-dee), which meant palm juice; but it became current in its present shape as early as 1673, when the traveller Fryer wrote of "the natives singing and roaring all night long, being drunk with toddy, the wine of the cocoe." About a century later Burns sang,

Between these I can find no vestigia, but imagination easily fills the gap. I see a company of jovial Scots, met in Calcutta, or Surat, on St. Andrew's Day. European wines and beer are expensive, whisky not obtainable at all; but the skilful khansamah makes up a punch with toddy spirit, hot water, sugar and limes, and they are "well content." After many years I see the few of them who still survive foregathered again in the old country, and one proposes to have a good brew of toddy for auld lang syne. If real toddy spirit cannot be had, what of that? Whisky is found to take very kindly to hot water and sugar and limes, and the old folks at home and the neighbours and the minister himself pronounce a most favourable verdict on "toddy." In short, it has come to stay. But we must return to the liquor in the Bhundaree's gourd. It is the rich sap which should have gone to the forming of coconuts, which is intercepted by cutting off the point of the fruit stalk and tying on an earthen pot. If the pot is clean, the juice, when it is taken down in the morning, not fermented yet but just beginning to sparkle with minute bubbles, not too sweet and not so oily as the milk of the coconut, is nectar to a hot and thirsty soul. No summer drink have I drunk so innocently restorative after a hot and toilsome march on a broiling May morning. But the Bhundaree will not squander it so: he takes care not to clean his pots, and when he takes them down in the morning the liquor is already foaming like London stout. Not that he means to drink it himself, for you must know that, by the rules of his caste, he is a total abstainer, being a Bhundaree, whose function is to draw toddy, not to drink it. This is one of those profound institutes by which the wisdom of the ancients fenced the whole social system of this strange land.

But, while the Bhundaree must refuse all intoxicating drinks himself, it is his duty to exercise a large tolerance towards those who are not so hindered. He is, in fact, a partner in the business of Babajee, Licensed Vendor of Fresh Toddy, towards whose spacious, open-fronted shop, thatched with "jaolees," he now carries his gourds. There the contents will stand, in dirty vessels and a warm place, maturing their exhilarating qualities until the evening, when the Tam o' Shanters and Souter Johnnies of the village begin to assemble and squat in a ring in the open space in front. They may be Kolees, or fishermen, and Agrees, who make salt, and aboriginal Katkurrees from the jungle, with their bows and arrows, most bibulous of all, but among them all there will be no Bhundaree. Babajee sits apart, presiding and serving, beside a dirty table, on which are many bottles and dirty tumblers of patterns which were on our tables thirty years ago. The assembly begins solemnly, discussing social problems and bartering village gossip, for the Hindu is by nature staid. After a while, at the second bottle perhaps, cheerfulness will supervene, then mirth and garrulity, ending, as the night closes round, with wordy contention and a general brawl. But nothing serious will happen, for toddy, though decidedly heady, is at the worst a thin potation. A strong and very pure spirit is distilled from it, which has its devotees, but the rustic, as a rule, prefers quantity to quality. We are often told that the British Government taught the people of India to drink, but the scene that I have tried to describe is indigenous conviviality, much older than any European connection with the country.

Is it any wonder that the coconut has become an emblem of fertility and prosperity and all good luck? When a new house is building you will see a high pole over the doorway, bearing coconuts at the top, with an umbrella spread over them. Do not ask the owner the meaning of the sign, for he does not know. He does not think about such matters, but he feels about them and he knows that that is the right thing to do. Besides, he might ask you why you nail a horseshoe over your door. The difference between us and him is that we do such things in jest, no longer believing in them. They are the husks of a dead faith with us. But the Hindu's faith is very living still. So, when he breaks a coconut at the launching of a pattimar, he is a gainer in hope, if nothing else; while we squander our champagne and gain nothing. That nut follows him even to the grave, or burning ground, with mystic significances which I cannot explain. I have been told that, when a very holy man dies, who always clothed himself in ashes and never profaned his hands with work, his disciples sometimes break a coconut over his head. If the spirit can escape from the body through the sutures of the skull instead of by any of the other orifices, it is believed to find a more direct route to heaven, so the purpose of this ceremony may be to facilitate its exit that way. In that case the breaking of the nut is perhaps only an accident, due to its not being so hard as the holy man's skull.