1835.] NATIVE COOKERY. 403 



was placed, the precipice must have been five or six 

 hundred feet deep ; and if the abyss had not been partly 

 concealed by the overhanging- ferns and lilies, my head 

 would have turned giddy, and nothing should have induced 

 nie to have attempted it. We continued to ascend, some- 

 times along ledges, and sometimes along knife-edged 

 ridges, having on each hand profound ravines. In the 

 Cordillera I have seen mountains on a far grander scale, 

 but for abruptness, nothing at all comparable with this. 

 In the evening we reached a flat little spot on the banks of the 

 same stream, which we had continued to follow, and which 

 descends in a chain of waterfalls : here we bivouacked for 

 the night. On each side of the ravine there were great 

 beds of the mountain-banana, covered with ripe fruit. 

 Many of these plants were from twenty to twenty-five feet 

 high, and from three to four in circumference. By the aid 

 of strips of bark for rope, and the stems of bamboos for 

 rafters, and the large leaf of the banana for a thatch, the 

 Tahitians in a few minutes built us an excellent house ; 

 and with withered leaves made a soft bed. 



They then proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening 

 meal. A light was procured, by rubbing a blunt-pointed 

 stick in a groove made in another, as if with the intention 

 of deepening it, until by the friction the dust became 

 ignited. A peculiarly white and very light wood (the 

 Hibiscus tiliaceus) is alone used for this purpose : it is the 

 same which serves for poles to carry any burden, and for 

 the floating outriggers to their canoes. The fire was 

 produced in a few seconds : but to a person who does not 

 understand the art, it requires, as I found, the greatest 

 exertion ; but at last, to my great pride, I succeeded in 

 igniting the dust. The Gaucho in the Pampas uses 3. 

 different method : taking an elastic stick about eighteen 

 inches long, he presses one end on his breast, and the other 

 pointed end into a hole in a piece of wood, and then 

 rapidly turns the curved part, like a carpenter's centre-bit. 

 The Tahitians having made a small fire of sticks, placed a 

 score of stones, of about the size of cricket-balls, on the 

 burning wood. In about ten minutes the sticks were con- 

 sumed, and the stones hot. They had previously folded up 

 in small parcels of leaves, pieces of beef, fish, ripe and 

 unripe bananas, and the tops of the wild arum. These 

 green parcels were laid in a layer between two layers of 

 the hot stones, and the whole then covered up with earth, 



