Interview with the King and Queen of RoanJciddi. 571 



enter his house, which was not so easy a process as it seems, 

 since the only access was by one of the windows, about tliree 

 feet from the ground. Tlie Nannekin, however, set us the 

 example, and we followed. He first invited us to sit upon 

 European chairs, and ordered his pretty young wife to fetch 

 us cocoa-nut milk. It was the first time we had ever tasted 

 this drink of the natural man in the goblet of civilization ! 

 How differently did this invaluable drink taste, when quaffed 

 from the fresh green shell, than in the artificial vessel of 

 human manufacture ! The natives of Puynipet did not, like 

 those of Nicobar, show their dexterity in opening the young 

 cocoa-nut by means of a slash. Here the husk is peeled off, 

 and an opening bored with much trouble till the fluid 

 contents gush out — a process so tedious, and manifesting 

 so little ingenuity, that one would rather expect it to be 

 adopted by a European, who for the first time in his life 

 was opening a cocoa-nut, than from a child of the tropics. 

 After the queen had presented with her dainty little hands 

 the cocoa-nut drink to the foreign guests, she squatted her- 

 self smiling and laughing on the earth beside the monarch, 

 occasionally hiding herself with much natural grace behind 

 her youthful husband, when she could not restrain a burst of 

 mirth at the interest with which we seemed to regard many 

 of the objects in her simple household. Nothing surprised 

 her more than that we should attach such value to some 

 baskets, plaited work, boxes, &c., as to be willing to ex- 

 change articles of European make for them. Like all the 



