200 customs. [1839. 



riage is consummated, and the day ends, among the heathen, 

 in riotous feasting and dancing. 



Parturition takes place without danger, difficulty, or cere- 

 mony. After delivery, the mother takes the infant to the 

 nearest spring, bathes it, and returns to her ordinary occupa- 

 tions, just as if nothing had happened. Names are given to 

 males and females indiscriminately, previous to the birth. 

 Children are usually suckled till they are six years old, and 

 some women have been known to suckle two or three of their 

 offspring of different ages, at the same time. 



They are not very ceremonious in regard to burials, but it 

 is customary to feast those who are present. 



In the preparation of food, their customs are similar to 

 those which prevail throughout the Pacific islands. Their 

 stove is the well-known Polynesian one — a hollow in the earth 

 lined with heated stones, and another layer over the articles 

 to be cooked, with a thin covering of earth and leaves above. 

 They have no fixed time for taking their meals, but eat when 

 they are hungry. Pork, fowls, birds, fish, bread-fruit, cocoa- 

 nuts, bananas, taro and yams, are their chief articles of food. 

 Rata, the native chestnut, is also much eaten. The sour 

 paste, called main, made from the bread-fruit, is used when 

 the trees are not in a bearing state. Pig, taro and bread- 

 fruit, are served up for visitors on banana leaves ; and some- 

 times cooked bread-fruit, or the delicious cocoa-nut pudding 

 (faiai), is handed round in wooden trays. When eaten, the 

 bread-fruit is dipped in salt water, or cocoa-nut oil. Their 

 drinking vessels are made of cocoa-nut shells. 



As has been before mentioned, the heathen are exceeding 

 great gluttons. They eat hogs, biche de mer, echina, holi- 

 thuria, and wood-maggots, entrails and all, with unusual 

 gout. 



They have a fine beverage in the cocoa-nut milk, which 

 they heat in shells ; but they are far more attached, espe- 

 cially the " devil's men," to their stimulating ava. This is 

 prepared in a most disgusting way. The ava plant, (piper 

 iiiythistLcum,) is chewed by the women, and then thrown 



