The Nono Tree

By George Bowles, Of Paea, Tahiti.

ONE day I noticed a small tree in the corner of my garden. I had not observed the tree before, because it was hidden behind the great trunk of a breadfruit. It attracted my attention because a peculiar, cream-coloured, globular object, with numerous little brown eyes, was nestled in the crutch of one of the branches.

I plucked this curiosity and was examining it when a neighbour dropped in; a man versed in botanical know ledge. When he saw what I had in my hand he almost shrieked: “Drop it; it’s deadly poison; that’s morinda citrifolia”!

He expatiated for some time upon the sinister fruit and went his way. Then I walked over to Jim Dexter’s.

Jim and I live on the island of Tahiti.

He is a retired pearl-diver, whom age has driven from the depths of the sea to the more agreeable elevations of his own

plantation.

Jim was sitting on his verandah over looking the lagoon and Sophie, his wife, was sitting nearby, making baby clothes for their eleventh grandchild, when I walked in and exhibited the blond potato with the brown freckles.

“What’s this poisonous thing, Jim?”

I asked.

“Poisonous!”' sneered Jim. “That is one of the grandest fruits that Nature ever provided for the nourishment of man. That comes off the Nono tree.

It saved our lives when we were starv ing; didn’t it, Sophie? We lived on it for nearly five months, when they couldn’t find our island; didn’t we, Sophie ?”

Sophie nodded.

“Couldn’t find your island? What island? Who couldn’t find it?”

An old hen that had been strolling about the verandah picked up the Nono apple where I had dropped it, clucked, and walked away, as Jim started his narrative.

“It was like this,” Jim said, “and that old hen proves that lam right. She took that Nono to give to her baby chicks. Old hens are full of wisdom.

She knows that isn’t poison, and so do I, and so does Sophie.

“It’s about thirty years since we went to Scilly, isn’t it, Sophie? The Max well company financed the expedition, and we were after pearl-shell. Scilly is one of the Isles Sous le Vent, and it is about 350 miles due west of Tahiti.

“We sailed with Captain Joe Win chester on his schooner ‘Tamari Tahiti’.

Sophie was with me, of course, and so were my nephews George and Gyp Dexter, and my son Willie, and my cousins Lionel and Tommie Bambridge.

They were boys then, ranging from twelve to eighteen years, and we were taking them because they were just out of school and their mothers thought Papeete was a bad place for them until they got a little more sense.

“Besides my wife and the youngsters, I took about forty natives, a complete outfit of diving equipment and sufficient flour, rice, salmon, beef, sugar, coffee and tea to last us for three months, when a schooner was to come to bring us more supplies and take away the shell.

“The three months were up. We had a heap of shell on the beach, but our food was nearly gone. There were al most fifty mouths to feed and the island produced practically nothing. We were glad when, one evening, a motor schooner called the ‘Little Tahiti’ ap peared outside the reef. That cele brated mariner, Winnie Brander, was in command. There is no pass in the reef at Scilly Island; vessels must lie optside and goods have to be taken ashore in whale boats.

“We were so hungry that we could not wait until morning for our chow, so one of the boys and I went out in a canoe and brought back a sack of flour, some tins of salmon, and biscuits, coffee and sugar for our supper.

“Night came on and it began to blow.

Then along came a hurricane, and Winnie Brander had to run for it. For about five months we never saw a ship

and we had nothing to eat except what we could get on the island. Robinson Crusoe might have existed without great discomfort, but I had two-score Tahiti natives, and our own family party of about ten to feed. There were very few coconuts in bearing, but there was pandanus on the beach, and, thank God, plenty of Nono trees. That was all in the vegetable line. In the sea there were fish and turtles.

“AT first, we thought Winnie Brander would be back as soon as the storm blew over, and then, as the days went by and we got more and more hungry, we concluded that Winnie had been shb wrecked, but we felt sure that the Max well company would send us another boat.

“In the meantime we found it diffi cult to get enough to eat. The divers became so weak from lack of food that they could not work any more. If there had been plenty of coconuts we could have got along, but they were very few and immature.

“The * pandanus root, scraped and cooked with such fish as we caught, helped to fill our half-a-hundred stomachs, but the old Nono was our standby, and that is why I say that your botanical friend does not know what he is talking about when he says it is poisonous. We roasted it and we baked it. We stuffed the fish with it and we sucked the pulp of the seeds for dessert. We also tried to roast the seeds and make coffee out of them, but that experiment was a failure.

“After a month or so the sole effort of the entire community was to get

enough food to keep us alive. The strong boys went out to the reef and caught turtles, when they could find them. Sometimes we found turtle eggs upon the beach. There were plenty of fish in the lagoon and in the sea outside, and these are what we lived on, plus the Nono fruit and the scrapings of pandanus, which some people call ‘screw-pine’.

“IJM'V’E months afterwards, when a -T boat finally found us, we learned what had happened.

“It appears that, after a desperate struggle with wind and wave, Winnie Brander got the ‘Little Tahiti’ back to Papeete. When the Maxwell people saw her coming through the pass they were delighted, because she appeared to be loaded to the gunnels with pearl-shell; but, when she got to the dock, they found she was only a water-logged hulk.

“However, they re-conditioned her and sent her back as soon as they could to relieve us at Scilly Island. She was commanded by a new captain, whose name was Picard. He was gone about a month and returned to Papeete with the report that he could not find Scilly Island. He attributed his navigational failure to the fact that there were cockroaches in his chronometer.

“By this time, Maxwell & Company were getting worried. They knew we were short of food, on a semi-barren island, and that there were about fifty of us.

“The third attempt to rescue us was made by the schooner ‘Taravao,’ Cap tain Mercanton. He was gone for

several weeks, and came back with the surprising news that Scilly Island had sunk. He would not admit that his navigation could have been wrong. He even stated that, so correct were his calculations, the ‘Taravao’ had sailed right over the island and the first mate had looked through a diving glass and seen coconut trees under the schooner’s keel.

“A conference was then held at Max well’s and it was decided that one more attempt should be made to find us. The schooner ‘Southern Cross’ was chartered and equipped, and a native Tahitian was put in command. His name was Taaroa and his method of navigation was by rule-of-thumb. One day he was sailing away out into the West when one of his sailors saw smoke eight or nine miles off, on the weather side. The captain thought it might be the smoke of a New Zealand steamer, but he had enough curiosity to work his vessel up a couple of miles to windward and the he saw the tops of the few coconut trees of Scilly Island. The next morn ing we had plenty of grub.”

“11THERE did the smoke come from?”

TT I asked.

“Well,” said Jim Dexter, “my nephew George and I had caught a turtle, but we were so weak that we hadn’t the strength to chop wood for a fire to cook it, so we found a dead and dry pandanus and set fire to the tree and were trying to roast the turtle that way. That’s what made the smoke.”

“Did you go back home on the ‘Southern Cross’?”

“No,” said Jim, “but I put two of my

strongest boys aboard her that night, with a gun, to see that she didn’t get away like Winnie Brander’s boat did, and in the morning we stripped her clean of everything in the eating line.

We kept her hanging around for several days while we filled our empty bellies, and then we filled her empty hold. We put in it over forty tons of fine-grade shell, worth in Papeete at that tim two thousand francs a ton. That’s eighty thousand francs, which meant in those days about £3,500.”

“After such an experience, of course, you went home as soon as you could,”

I suggested.

“Not on your life!” replied Jim Dexter.

“We lived on Scilly Island for over five

years, and two of our children were bom there—weren’t they, Sophie?”

“Three,” said Sophie.

T . , . Mr * *[* Grierson Goad has resigned ;V S a . semor medical assistant in the New Guinea public service in order take oyer the management of the Kavieng Club, which is one of the best known institutions of the kind in the bouth keas.

Dr. W. H. Macgranahan returned to Syd " ey ro “ Pa P ua by “Macdhui” ° n rch 7 t - accompanied by his wife.

For the P ast three years he has been in charge of the Anglican Mission’s hospital at Gona, on the north-eastern coast.