Copra

“ Copra, the dried kernel of the coconut, is the leading, and almost the only, article of commerce in every island of the South Pacific, and as such is the principal contributor to the income of the natives from which everything else they use is bought. The copra of the South Pacific islands is incomparably finer than that of the South American, West Indian or African tropics, and the plantations of Samoa, Fiji and Tahiti are the largest [228] and most productive in the world. ”

“ From both coasts of Africa and from the West Indies the export has been steadily increasing, and yet, though the world seems to be easily sated with every other kind of tropical product, of copra it never seems to have enough. Handicapped by a sea-carriage of twelve thousand miles, the South Sea Island copra has always commanded a local price of from £8 to £11 a ton, and now that a soap and candle factory has been established in Australia, it is more likely to rise than fall. ”

“ For weeks at a time they were given nothing but sweet potatoes to eat, and for weeks at a time it would be nothing but rice. He cut out the cocoanut from the shells day after day; and for long days and weeks he fed the fires that smoked the copra, till his eyes got sore and he was set to felling trees. He was a good axe-man, and later he was put in the bridge-building gang. Once, he was punished by being put in the road-building gang. At times he served as boat's crew in the whale boats, when they brought in copra from distant beaches or when the white men went out to dynamite fish. ”

“ Copra—the word itself is common to sea traders, but to landlubbers it is a strange expression found in stories of the South Seas.
Copra is the meat of coconuts dried in the sun. The natives break open the nuts and lay them out on woven mats to rot. The rotting process in the tropic heat brings out the oils and acid of the coconut. It takes about three months of drying process to make the copra rotten enough to be ready for market. The natives load it in bales of reeds and carry it off the island in canoes to waiting ships. ”

“ Copra is made by splitting open cocoa-nuts and drying them either artificially or in the sun. It is used in large quantities in Europe as an element in oil cake and other cattle foods. The localities at present suited for the manufacture of copra are on the south-west coast from Hula to Roma, all along the shores of Milne Bay, at Bentley Bay, and along the north-east coast as far as Dampier Straits, and many of the Islands of the D'Entrecasteaux and Louisiade Group. At each of these places cocoa-nuts grow in abundance, and could be purchased from the natives at a low price. ”

“ The odour of coconut prevailed, delicately but abidingly; for, save for the occasioned pleasure junket, The Tigress was a copra carrier, shell and fibre.
McClintock's was a plantation of ten thousand palms, yielding him annually about half a million nuts. Natives brought him an equal amount from the neighbouring islands. As the palm bears nuts perennially, there were always coconut-laden proas making the beach. Thus, McClintock carried to Copeley's press about half a million pounds of copra. ”

“ After breakfast I received a visit from an English Trader, who lives about two miles from me. Poor fellow, in my honour he had put on a coat, and he was literally running with perspiration when he reached my house, and he did not succeed in getting cool again before he left although he stayed some time. He seems to be doing a very fair trade here in copra, and although he has not been long on the island, he has already several tons of the dried coconut (copra) . After he left I was attacked with a good-for-nothing fit and did nothing all day. ”

“ Cloves, clove stems and copra are the chief exports, the production of the island. The bulk of the articles named, with the exception of copra, are sent to the United Kingdom; India, however, has a larger trade with Zanzibar than any other country. From it are imported food stuffs (rice, grain, flour, ghee, groceries) and piece goods. The copra is sent almost exclusively to Marseilles. The most valuable articles of import are piece goods and rice. The piece goods come chiefly from the United Kingdom, India, America and the Netherlands, the rice entirely from India. ”

“ The go-downs of Sourabaya were full of sugar; but the ships sail light, nevertheless. The follies of Europe blight even the crops in far tropical islands. I have seen the price of copra drop on a beach of Celebes at the bare rumor of another French movement in the Ruhr. We left that copra on the beach. The natives could not accept the price, and were frankly puzzled that their labors should have been wasted, and that now they were unable to give our captain their orders for hardware and cottons, which would have gone to Europe. From this distance, Europe does appear indecipherable. ”

“ A heavily laden breeze identified unmistakably several long buildings as copra warehouses.
It seemed a busy town, as towns near the equator go. In the street into which the pier opened a thin stream of pedestrians passed by in brief review before the watcher: Moros, a few Filipinos, a Chino staggering under a heavy balanced pinga, two white-clad Americans, while several rickshaws, Moro drawn, jogged by with patrons concealed under raised tops. ”

“ A sack and a sturdy pair of shoulders will carry the dried kernel—now converted into copra—to the nearest store, where it is worth a shilling for every ten pounds. The traders are able to give this high retail price, because they pay in "trade," and not in money. Their profit is made out of the calico, etc., accepted by the native as the equivalent for the shilling. To even the laziest native an occasional short spurt of energy is pleasant, and his copra having provided him with a change of clothes, a tin of biscuits, and a gallon of lamp oil, he can lie on his back for the rest of the year. ”

“ The coconut industry is far more picturesque; it is chiefly confined to the south side of Vanua Levu and to Taveuni and the other islands. The nut is grown for its kernel, which, when dried, is called copra, and yields the coconut oil which we use for various purposes. The tree grows everywhere in this region, but does not flourish in Viti Levu owing to an insect pest which seems peculiar to that island. The nut has always been much used by the natives for food, but it is now carefully cultivated for the production of copra. ”

“ The present conditions present especially flattering attractions to cocoanut growers capable of undertaking the cultivation upon a scale of some magnitude. By coöperation, small estates could combine in the [35] common ownership of machinery, whereby the products of the grove could be converted into more profitable substances than copra.
3. The present production of copra (estimated at 278,000 piculs in 1902) is an assurance of a sufficient supply to warrant the erection of a high-class modern plant for the manufacture of the ultimate (the “butter”) products of the nut. ”

“ Then a day came when two Frenchmen—shrewd traders and planters of coconuts in the Tuamotu—spoke of Ariri. Here was an island capable of an annual hundred tons of copra, and claimed by no man; they would plant it and reap the rewards of enterprise. The chief difficulty was to find a superintendent to take charge of the project; it needed a white man, but white men willing to undertake a task of such poignant loneliness were not to be found every day in Papeete. As it chanced, their man was at hand.
The natives called him Tino—perhaps his name had once been King. ”

“ The islets scattered round the reef have been equally distributed amongst the descendants of William Masters's three wives, who now number ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island council, presided over by "Mister Masters himself," are worked to such purpose that they produce a thousand pounds' worth of copra per year. ”

“ For some unknown reason the natives there had strong objections to traders in their territory: the one before him had been killed, and this man, I do not know his name, had been warned several times that, unless he went, he too would share the fate of the last. The natives had point blank refused to bring him copra, and to add to his discomforts had stolen nearly all his food. Day and night he had had to watch lest they killed him. His copra shed had been burnt down, and all his clothes, except those he stood in, had been seized and distributed. ”

“ At the liberal valuation of £9 a ton for the copra, and allowing for the money brought back by the returned emigrants, the entire income of the island is under £3,500 a year, and upon this modest sum the natives have to satisfy their new wants, the Mission teachers and several independent traders have to live, and a fair margin of profit has to be found for the shareholders of two trading companies, after paying the salaries of their local employés. In 1899, however, the export of copra reached the unusual figure of seven hundred tons, and the island was passing rich. ”

“ TEMPLE AT SELEO, NEW GUINEA.
To face page 192 The two white men here collect the trepang, copra, pearl-shell, etc., from the neighbouring islands. They have cleared Seleo of much jungle and planted it with cocoanuts, having some Chinese and Malays, as well as natives, as workers. They export much copra. I learnt here that the natives all like to shave with bits of broken glass when they can get it, instead of a bit of pearl-shell. ”

“ The copra traffic is co-existent, and co-extensive with the labour traffic, it has been contaminated by it from the beginning—nearly all the early atrocities of the labour trade sprang from its relations with the mysterious copra, and may be said to have been the procuring cause of the Islanders' revenge which has overtaken not a few innocent and many misguided men. ”

“ Copra is the staple industry of the New Hebrides, as they say in the geography books, but the output of it is about as reliable as the rainfall, for the supply depends not, as might be expected, on the demand, but on the whim of the natives; if they feel industrious, or are hard pressed for tobacco and provisions, they will go into the bush and bring in a sufficient quantity to meet their needs; but as a rule they will only collect it from their own particular trees near their village and will not go far afield, where they could get double the amount for half the labour. ”

“ The products of such an enterprise would be increased by the certainty of a local market in the Philippines for some part of the output. The average market value of the best grades of copra in the Marseilles market is $54.40, gold, per English ton. The jobbing value on January 1 of this year, of the refined products, were, for each ton of copra:
the difference representing the profit per ton, less the cost of manufacture. ”

“ Even the first wonder over creation seemed to gleam in the eyes of those wild peoples. Only one odious odour disturbed the rich scents of tropic flowers. It came from the copra sheds round the bend of the bay, by the primitive wharf where a fore-and-aft schooner lay. It was at that spot where beggared tattooed chiefs and melancholy kings and queens of fallen dynasties cracked nuts ready for the extraction of suspicious looking fats to smear on the artificial breadfruit and well-combed smooth hair of civilised Man! O world of inscrutable mystery!
“‘Ow gloryhus is rum, woman and coco-nuts!” ”

“ Then they cut out the copra and put it into sacks, and the women would carry it down to the trader at the village by the lagoon, and he would give in exchange for it rice and soap and tinned meat and a little money. Sometimes there would be a feast in the neighbourhood, and a pig would be killed. ”

“ While we were vainly looking out for a landing-place, a white man, accompanied by two Polynesians, launched a small outrigger canoe from the reef edge, and paddled out to us. From the white man we learned that the island belonged to a Mr. Halicott, an American gentleman, for whom he had been acting as care-taker for the previous five years, and that he and his native assistants were engaged in planting cocoa-nuts, and hoped in time to do a remunerative trade in copra. ”

“ In this case, the way of getting up to the islands is clear, and the work of copra trading, keeping store for native customers, fruit-buying and shipping on the spot, is the best possible training for an independent position. If this proves a vain hope (it need not, in the case of a good man, if one may judge by the wretched incapables who occupy the trader’s post in many islands) our adventurer must try to raise the cost of a passage as best he can, and see what he can get to do among the white people of the group he has selected, when he arrives. ”

“ The copra dealer may carry muskets and gunpowder, the copra dealer, if he be a German, French, or North American, can get Islanders for muskets, and lodge the Islanders in some safe rendezvous to be agreed upon, and the master of the labour vessel will arrive on the scene at the appointed time, and the thing is done. The risk would be very great, but risk is one of the attractions to many persons engaged in fishing for men. ”

“ Rubber plantations are numerous in this section of the colony, and copra is another of the exports.
The horse of the East Coast of Africa is really the negro. Everything is moved on two-wheeled trucks, pushed or pulled with ropes by natives. No cattle or oxen were seen, so it is fair to conclude that neither cattle nor horses can live along this section of the coast. Any one can form an idea of what a sickly country it must be for human beings where cattle and horses cannot exist. Fever runs down the natives, also, but not in the same proportion as the whites. ”