The general country being thus fitted with a name, we proceeded to name
the several parts of it. The mountain we called simply The Mountain,
though to Billy it was always Old Smoker; the slope leading up to the
crater we called Rocky Hill, and the wood beneath Bread-fruit Wood.
The big rock at the north-west corner was Red Rock, and the two smaller
ones at the south-west were The Sentinels. And so we named various
parts as we thought of it, not all at one time, and many of them not
until I made my map, of which I may say more hereafter. I must
mention, however, that Billy insisted on giving my name to the wood
where we slept on our first night, and in my turn I gave his name to a
sandy bay on the west of the island, and Billy was very proud when he
spelt out Bobbin's Bay on the aforesaid map.
[Sidenote: Plantations]
So the winter passed away, not like the winter in England, for we had
no frost or snow, nor did the leaves fall from the trees; the only true
sign that it was winter was the absence of flowers and fruit on the
trees; and even this was not the case with all of them, for the
cocoa-nut palm bore its fruit all the year round, so that on the same
tree there were nuts in all stages of ripeness, which I thought a very
wonderful thing. We had a considerable amount of rain, and this became
greater as we came into the spring season. We had kept for this season
the yams which we saved from the pigs, as I related a while ago, and we
now planted them, choosing two places, since we did not know on what
soil they would thrive best, whether where we had found them, or near
our house. We had kept the yams in one of our pans, and we guessed it
was time to plant them because we saw sprouts growing out of them, as
you sometimes see the eyes of a potato sprouting. We cut these
sprouting parts off, keeping the other parts for boiling, and set them
in the ground, some on the ground just below our house, the others in
the glade where we had discovered them. Knowing that we stood no
chance of getting a crop unless we defended the plants from the wild
pigs, we put fences of hurdles (made of twigs and reeds) round our
plantations, which were at first only a few yards square, and waited
with what patience we might for the result. I will say here that the
yams we planted near our house came to nothing, why I know not; but the
others throve exceedingly, and though we had some trouble with the
pigs, which broke down the fence more than once and did some damage, we
got a very fair crop in the summer, which supplied us with mashed
potatoes, as Billy said (for which we used dripping from the pigs we
cooked), and also with seed for another sowing.
[Illustration: Jug with Bent-wood Handle and Cup]
[Sidenote: Articles of Toilet]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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