242 VOYAGE TO THE 



chap, are engaged in the laborious occupation of preparing 

 >— v— ' what they have gathered for their hungry masters, 

 j^Jg who, immediately the nuts are placed before them, 

 stay their appetites by extracting the pulpy sub- 

 stance contained in the outside woody fibres of the 

 fruit, and throw the remainder to their wives, who 

 further extract what is left of the pulp for their own 

 share, and proceed to extricate the contents of the 

 interior, consisting of four or five small kernels about 

 the size of an almond. To perform this operation, 

 the nut is placed upon a flat stone endwise, and 

 with a block of coral, as large as the strength of the 

 women will enable them to lift, is split in pieces, 

 and the contents again put aside for their husbands. 

 As it requires a considerable number of these small 

 nuts to satisfy the appetites of their rapacious rulers, 

 the time of the women is wholly passed upon their 

 knees pounding nuts, or upon the sharp coral col- 

 lecting shells and sea eggs. On some occasions the 

 nuts are baked in the ground, which gives them a 

 more agreeable flavour, and facilitates the extraction 

 of the pulp ; it does not, however, diminish the 

 labour of the females, who have in either case to 

 bruise the fibres to procure the smaller nuts. 



The superiority of sex was never more rigidly 

 enforced than among these barbarians, nor were the 

 male part of the human species ever more despicable. 

 On one occasion an unfortunate woman who was 

 pounding some of these nuts, which she had walked 

 a great distance to gather, thinking herself unob- 

 served, ate two or three of the kernels as she ex- 

 tracted them ; but this did not escape the vigilance 

 of her brutal husband, who instantly rose and felled 

 her to the ground in the most inhuman manner 



