Chapter VII

The Coconut Tree

Moro was always up to tricks. I noticed that he was whispering something to Filippa who was laughing.

“Tell it out,” demanded Filippa’s mother.

“The bad boy said the coconut, which we are trying to break, is a hairy monkey’s head dried.”

“Let me see it,” I demanded.

Surely enough, there was plainly marked a monkey’s eyes and mouth and hair and nose.

“We’ll soon settle this,” said Fil, who dashed the coconut on a stone, broke the hard shell, wasted half the sweet milk,—exposing the white, fragrant meat.

“Did you know that the coconut furnishes cloth, mats, roofs, fuel, soap oil, candy, puddings, cups, dyes, lamp oil, butter, candles, axle grease, ropes, brushes, furniture, shade, food, drink, and liquor to intoxicate,” asked Filippa’s mother, who was as wise as Fil’s father.

“Please go slowly,” I remarked, “for you are making me think that these islands are Paradise; that you touch some button, and every wish comes true, as in the fairy stories. In our country, a tree furnishes only lumber; or sometimes nuts or sugar in addition, but never over two things at once. Now you would have me believe that one slim tree with only a tuft of leaves at the top, furnishes you twenty useful and rich products. This is really too much to believe, though I ask you to forgive me for being so frank.”

Filippa’s mother replied: “These are the gardens of the sunny Equator; and you can, therefore, expect wonderful things. The rough covering of the shell is woven into mats, brushes, ropes, and bags. The fibers of the leaves make a fine cloth. The dried leaves make a roof-thatch. The trunk makes foundation poles. The coconut itself is fruit and drink. When the white meat is dried, it is shredded for pastry and candy. When the coconut meat is pressed, the oil extracted is used for fuel, light, hair pomades, butter, candles, and grease. It is used also in making the best hand soaps; in fact, it makes the only soap that can be used with salt sea water.”

“Please let me tell all its other valuable qualities,” said Fil.

“If you cut a coconut in half, you have two cups, or dishes. You can draw the milk through a small hole, plug the hole, and use the shell as a float. If you burn the shell, you can make a deep dye from the ashes,—a dye that will not fade or wash out.”

“I’ll tell you more about it,” Moro eagerly intruded. “The oddest use for a smoothed half of a coconut shell, is to use it as a rat-guard, to shed off rats from our strings of dried fruit hanging from the roof. As the rat comes down the rattan rope, the halved coconut shell tips, and down he falls from its smooth surface, to the floor, and misses the hanging fruit.

“If you climb up the high coconut tree, and cut a hole in the flowering stalk, the juice will run out. This is called the delicious ‘tuba’ liquor, and we catch it in cups made from half of a coconut shell.”

“And if you ferment and distill that liquor,” said the Padre, “you have the cocoa wine which is much used for medicine in America.”

Filippa’s mother then remarked: “I have seen coconut oil, placed in a coconut shell, burning along a coconut wick, as a lamp, in a house built out of coconut stems and leaves, under a coconut grove; and the Filipino family were eating coconuts, and drinking coconut ‘tuba’ juice, at a table made from coconut stalks.”

“That must have been in Coconutville, when a coconut clock was striking, under a coconut moon,” laughed Fil, who sometimes was full of smart wit.

“But what I have said is exactly and solemnly true,” replied his gentle mother.

“I understand it now,” I replied, “and I see how one coconut tree would make me richer than a whole forest of poplar or oak trees at home.”

Hungry Moro remarked: “I wish that this moment I had coconut shredded over some Bebinka cakes.”

“What are Bebinka cakes?” I inquired.

“They are pancakes made from fermented corn and rice dough, mixed. Every Filipino is fond of them,” explained Filippa’s mother.

Chapter VIII

Indigo, Mango, Guava, Durian

“If you will remain in our sunnier Philippines, I’ll tell you about plants and flowers and fruits, that you have never even heard about,” said sunny little Filippa, who herself was as beautiful as a flower, and as soft to touch as a fruit.

“Tell about our indigo,” suggested her brother Fil.

Filippa looked very wise, pointed to her indigo skirt, and continued: “You get your dyes from the benzene of coal tar, but they do not stand washing or sunlight, as well as our bright and strong vegetable dyes. We take our indigo plant, and steep the leaves in water for twelve hours, in a stone tank. Then Fil drains off the yellow liquor. This soon turns green. Then blue sediment settles in Nature’s wonderful chemical way, under the strong sunlight. We drain off the water, and cut the indigo cakes into cubes.”

“Very well told,” remarked Filippa’s mother. “This is a dye which will not fade. It lasts as long as the gown. Now, Moro, I would like you to tell about mangoes and guavas and durians; for you are always eating them.”

Moro laughed, and began to throw sticks up into a tall tree.

“What are you doing? Why don’t you answer?” I inquired.

“I’m trying to knock down a custard, one foot long and half a foot deep,” he replied.

“Such nonsense. Custards in my country are made out of eggs and are baked in ovens,” I said.

“Not this better kind,” replied Moro, who brought down a huge fruit, all covered with sharp spurs and spikes, sharper and harder than rose-thorns.

“Nature has kept her rich custard guarded by spikes and by an awful odor,” remarked Fil’s father, as he broke open the thick skin with an ax.

“But it’s worth the trouble,” said Moro, who pointed out the heart of the fruit, which truly was one solid, delicious natural custard, one foot long,—enough for a whole Filipino family.

“The monkeys know how to open the spiked fruit better than you do,” said Fil. “They throw them from the high branches. The fruit breaks open on the ground. Then the wild monkeys race down the tree, and eat up the custard durian. Who said that a monkey does not think?”

Everybody laughed at this odd but true tale of the remarkable Philippines.

“I know something about guava, for I eat guava jelly with my turkey and venison at home, but I never knew that it came from the far-away Philippine Islands. Is it a root or a seed?” I inquired.

“Oh, no!” replied Moro. “It’s a fruit taken from that low tree over there. The flowers are white. The fruit, shaped like a pear, is yellow.”

“What makes the delightful jelly red?” I inquired.

“Perhaps the cooking, or the sugar that is added,” suggested Fil’s mother.

“You have not yet told about mangoes. Please hand our friend one,” said Filippa.

Moro climbed up and up a dizzy height, into an evergreen tree sixty feet high. He brought down in his pockets, several fruits as large as cucumbers, only the colors were red and yellow.

“Eat one. They are the most delicious and juicy fruit known in the whole world,—just like wine,” said Moro.

I bit eagerly into one, and at once threw it far away. Everybody laughed at my strange action.

“Why, it’s turpentine; it’s paint,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d do this to me, Moro.”

“Swallow it anyway. That turpentine smell lasts only a second,” explained Filippa.

I tried another mango, and found it to be the juiciest and sweetest fruit that I ever ate, dripping wine, full of refreshment in a hot climate, food and drink and medicine in one.

“What do you do with its large seed, as hard as iron?” I inquired.

“I’ll show you,” replied Moro.

The bright boy at once lighted a fire, and roasted the hard seed in the ashes. Then he brushed and washed it clean; and handed it to me, when it became somewhat cool, saying: “Eat it too; it is really chocolate toast now.”

And such I found it to be.

“Your mango then is a whole breakfast,—toast, drink, and fruit,” I said.

Chapter IX

The Forest

When we all met next morning, again under the bamboo grove, the good Padre said:

“If you were lost in your woods at home, you would soon wander and die; but if you were lost here, you could live for years.”

“Then let us go into such a forest of Eden,” I replied, and held out my hands to Fil and Filippa.

Away we went down the white shell road across the canal; and soon we were lost among the many trees, palms, and vines.

The Padre pointed to the coconut tree and the nipa palm, and said: “As we already have told you, they would afford you a house, food, drink, light, and soap.”

“What is this great hard tree?” I inquired.

The Padre explained: “That’s the valuable mahogany. Thin strips of it are polished, and used to cover the woodwork of your piano and bureau at home.”

“And this other wonderful, new tree?” I asked.

“That is the molave. It is so hard that sea worms and white ants cannot bore into it. So it is good for boats, wharves, and frames for big buildings,” replied the Padre.

“Here is a pretty tree,” remarked Filippa.

“You should think so,” answered her father. “It is the lanete. Its wood is so strong and pliable, that your violin was made from part of one.”

“Here’s a skipping rope,” exclaimed Filippa.

“No, a boat rope,” explained Fil.

“That is really the bejuco rattan vine,” remarked the Padre, who knew botany and the lore of nature. “It is three hundred feet long, as long as a city block, if you pull it out of the jungle and away from the tree tops, where it has climbed like a huge snake. We can use it for bridge or carriage ropes, or we can divide the strands and make cloth, or hats, or cord out of it.”

“What gorgeous and sweet-scented flowers,” exclaimed Filippa, pointing to a great tree.

“That is the Ylang,” said the Padre. “Our friend uses its perfume on his handkerchief; but he did not know, perhaps, that the flower grew in the far-away Philippines. It has the deepest fragrance of any flower, whether on plant, bush, or tree.”

“What can its strange name mean?” I inquired; for I