41 
use stains the bowl to a colour resembling bronze, so much so 
that the first I saw I believed to be made of that metal. The 
taste is pungent and unpleasant, leaving an uncomfortable huski¬ 
ness in the throat. 
The Romish priests who are upon the island, drink Kava with 
the natives with whom they reside. The Tue Tonga is a pagan ; 
but King Josiah and those who have been converted to Christianity 
have left it otf, at the desire of the Protestant Missionaries. In 
Wallis’s Island the Trench pilot, who is a respectable person, 
drinks Kava from choice, which he makes by stamping the root 
in a mortar. At the Peejee Group it is so scarce, that a man 
about to sail from Tonga for those islands, provided himself 
with as much as would fill a moderate-sized cart, which was to 
answ’er all purposes of barter, &c. The yams of the Peejees are 
the best in the South Seas. 
At Wallis’s Island I met the King, walking from his house 
in which he had slept to that in which he was to pass the day. 
A root of Kava, without the stems, was carried slung upon a 
pole before him: it was broken up and brewed as soon as he 
arrived, exactly in the same manner as at Tonga, except that 
those who had to chew the root washed their mouths before 
commencing their office; there also the principal person present, 
next to himself, prepared the mixture. 
^ Under the shade of a tree upon the Island of Vavou I saw a 
Kava party of the poorest sort: it consisted of an old man and 
five or six others; they had but a very small piece of dry root, 
yet they used as much solemnity in making the beverage as at 
the house of the Tue Tonga, so that it was a ridiculous spectacle. 
