%W COOK** VOYAGE TO FEB. 



trenchers, of different sizes,. Judging from what we 

 saw growing, and from what was brought to market, 

 there can be no doubt that the greatest part of their 

 vegetable food consists of sweet potatoes, taro, and 

 plantains ; and that bread-fruit and yams are rather 

 to be esteemed rarities. Of animal food, they can 

 be in no want ; as they have abundance of hogs, 

 which run, without restraint, about the houses ; and 

 if they eat dogs, which is not improbable, their stock 

 of these seem to be very considerable. The great 

 number of fishing-hooks found among them, showed, 

 that they derive no inconsiderable supply of animal 

 food from the sea. But it should seem, from their 

 practice of salting fish, that the openness of their 

 coast often interrupts the business of catching them ; 

 as it may be naturally supposed, that no set of people 

 would ever think of preserving quantities of food arti- 

 ficially, if they could depend upon a daily, regular 

 supply of it, in its fresh state. This sort of reasoning, 

 however, will not account for their custom of salting 

 their pork, as well as their fish, which are preserved 

 in gourd-shells. The salt, of which they use a great 

 quantity for this purpose, is of a red colour, not very 

 coarse, and seems to be much the same with what our 

 stragglers found at Christmas Island. It has its 

 colour, doubtless, from a mixture of the mud, at the 

 bottom of the part where it is formed, for some of it 

 that had adhered in lumps, was of a sufficient white- 

 ness and purity. 



They bake their vegetable food with heated stones, 

 as at the Southern Islands > and, from the vast quan- 

 tity which we saw dressed at one time, we suspected 

 that the whole village, or, at least, a considerable 

 number of people, joined in the use of a common 

 oven. We did not see them dress any animal food 

 at this island ; but Mr. Gore's party, as already men- 

 tioned, had an opportunity of satisfying themselves, 

 that it was dressed in Oneeheow in the same sort of 

 ovens j which leaves no doubt of this being also the 



