WEAPONS. FOOD. 479 



by the ancient inhabitants of Europe. It would be interesting 

 to know the relative advantage of the two classes, which 

 surely cannot have been used for exactly the same purposes. 

 They had also bows and arrows, which, however, were not 

 sufficiently strong to be used in warfare. The bow-strings 

 were made of Roava bark.* The Society Islanders are said 

 to have been cruel in war, but according to Captain Cook 

 "they are seldom disturbed by either foreign or domestic 

 troubles." Though not cowards, they regard it as " much 

 less disgraceful to run away from an enemy with whole bones, 

 than to fight and be wounded." f 



" Of tame animals they had only hogs, dogs, and poultry ; J 

 neither was there a wild animal in the island, except ducks, 

 pigeons, parroquets, with a few other birds, and rats, there 

 being no other quadruped, nor any serpent." The dogs 

 were kept entirely for food, and Captain Cook assures us that 

 "a South Sea dog was little inferior to an English lamb: 

 their excellence is probably owing to their being kept up and 

 fed wholly on vegetables." The natives preferred dog to pork. 

 From the sea they obtained excellent fish and shell-fish. They 

 had also bread-fruit, bananas, plantains, yams, cocoa-nnts, 

 potatoes, the sugar-cane, a fruit not unlike an apple, and 

 several other plants which served for fruit, and required very 

 little culture. The bread-fruit tree supplied them with 

 abundance of fresh fruit for eicfht months, and during the 



O ' O 



other four they used " mahie," which is a kind of sour paste, 

 prepared from the fermented ripe fruit. It is probable that 

 nine -tenths of their diet consisted of vegetable food ; and 

 the common people scarcely ever tasted either pork or dog, 

 although the hogs appear to have been very abundant. 



* Wilson, 1. c. p. 368. World ; Hawkesworth's Voyages, 



t Ibid. p. 363. vol. i. p. 482. 



Wallis's Voyage round the Cook's Voyage round the World, 



p. 187. 



