568 Voyage of the Novara. 



great famine. The fruit thus treated continues fit for con- 

 sumption for years, and, despite its sour taste and nauseous 

 odour when exhumed, it is regarded by the natives as a most 

 palatable and nutritive dish, when well kneaded, placed 

 between two banana leaves, and baked between two hot 

 stones. Besides tlie bread-fruit, the principal articles of food 

 in use among the natives are cocoa-nuts, sugar-cane, yams, 

 pigeons, turtle, fish, and trepang, the sort of sea cucumber of 

 which we have already given a description, and which the 

 natives eat in the raw state. 



They also eat taro [Caladium esculentmn), a beautiful 

 bulbous-rooted plant of the Aroidea tribe, with its broad 

 elegant leaves, which, together with wild ginger and 

 turmeric (which is used sometimes for food, sometimes 

 for anointing the person, or dyeing their dresses) and the 

 plant they call Kawa {^Piper Methijsticum)^ grow in great 

 profusion on the property of the Nannekin. 



As in all the South Sea Islands, the juice of the Kawa is 

 used in Puynipet for distilling an intoxicating beverage, 

 which indeed plays a conspicuous part in all their solemni- 

 ties. But the mode of preparing it is somewhat better 

 calculated to tempt the palate, since it is not, as elsewhere, 

 first chewed by the women, but rubbed between two 

 large stones, wetted, and then drawn off in cocoa-nut shells. 

 The leading chief is entitled to the first shells of the prepared 

 Kawa, or, if he is not present, the chief priest, who mutters a 

 few prayers over it ere drinking it. 



