136 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS CH. vn 



yams ; cocos, a kind of arum, known in the East Indies by 

 the name of ffabava ; l a fruit known there by the name of 

 eng. mallow, 2 and considered most delicious ; sugar-cane, 

 which the inhabitants eat raw ; a root of the salop kind, 

 called by the inhabitants pea ; 3 the root also of a plant 

 called ethee ; and a fruit in a pod like a large hull of a 

 kidney bean, 4 which, when roasted, eats much like a chestnut, 

 and is called ahee. Besides these there is the fruit of a tree 

 called wharra, 5 in appearance like a pine-apple ; the fruit of 

 a tree called nono ; the roots, and perhaps leaves of a fern ; 

 and the roots of a plant called theve : which four are eaten 

 only by the poorer sort of people in times of scarcity. 



Of tame animals they have hogs, fowls, and dogs, which 

 latter we learned to eat from them ; and few were there of 

 the nicest of us but allowed that a South Sea dog was next 

 to an English lamb. This indeed must be said in their 

 favour, that they live entirely upon vegetables ; probably our 

 dogs in England would not eat half as well. Their pork 

 certainly is most excellent, though sometimes too fat ; their 

 fowls are not a bit better, rather worse maybe, than ours 

 at home, and often very tough. Though they seem to 

 esteem flesh very highly, yet in all the islands I have seen, 

 the quantity they have of it is very unequal to the 

 number of their people ; it is therefore seldom used among 

 them, even the principal chiefs do not have it every day or 

 even every week, though some of them had pigs that we 

 saw quartered upon different estates, as we send cocks to 

 walk in England. When any of these chiefs kills a hog, 

 it seems to be divided almost equally among all his 

 dependents, he himself taking little more than the rest. 

 Vegetables are their chief food, and of these they eat a large 

 quantity. 



Cookery seems to have been but little studied here ; 

 they have only two methods of applying fire. Broiling 



1 Colocasia antiquorum, Schott., better known by its New Zealand name 

 taro (see p. 253). 2 Hibiscus esculentus, Linn. ?. 



3 Tacca pinnalifida, Forst. 4 Lablab vulgaris, Savi. 



5 Pandanus odoratissimus, Linn. f. 



