332 A DIGRESSION. 
and after dinner showed me a pretty large field 
very well stocked with them. 
The delightful feelings with which I surveyed 
the new plantation may be imagined, when it is 
recollected, that these poor islanders, from want 
of means of subsistence, are compelled, assuredly 
with heavy hearts, to murder their own offspring, 
and that this yam alone is sufficient to remove so 
horrible a necessity. I might joyfully affirm, 
that through my instrumentality the distressed 
mother need no longer look forward to the birth 
of her third or fourth child with the dreadful 
consciousness that she endured all her pain only 
to deliver a sacrifice to the hand of the mur- 
derer. When she should clasp her child to her 
breast, and see her husband look on it with a 
father’s tenderness, they might both remember 
“‘ Totabu,” and the beneficent plants which he 
had given them. I beg pardon for this digres- 
sion, and return to our dinner. 
After the yams, a number of dishes were pro- 
duced, prepared from the powdered cocoa-wood, 
which is made with water into a thick paste, and 
then baked in small cakes: it has no taste at 
all, and cannot be very nutritious. A dessert of 
