228 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND CHAP, x 



one delicious meal. These, with the fern roots and one 

 vegetable (Pandanus) l totally unknown in Europe, which, 

 though eaten by the natives, no European will probably 

 ever relish, are the whole of the vegetables which I know 

 to be eatable, except those which they cultivate, and have 

 probably brought with them from the country from whence 

 they themselves originally come. 



Nor does their cultivated ground produce many species 

 of esculent plants ; three only have I seen, yams, sweet 

 potatoes, and cocos, all three well known and much esteemed 

 in both the East and West Indies. Of these, especially the 

 two former, they cultivate often patches of many acres, and 

 I believe that any ship that found itself to the northward 

 in the autumn, about the time of digging them up, might 

 purchase any quantity. They also cultivate gourds, the 

 fruits of which serve to make bottles, jugs, etc., and a very 

 small quantity of the Chinese paper mulberry tree. 



Fruits they have none, except I should reckon a few 

 kinds of insipid berries which had neither sweetness nor 

 flavour to recommend them, and which none but the boys 

 took the pains to gather. 



The woods, however, abound in excellent timber, fit for 

 any kind of building in size, grain, and apparent durability. 

 One, which bears a very conspicuous scarlet flower 2 made up 

 of many threads, and which is as big as an oak in England, 

 has a very heavy hard wood which seems well adapted for 

 the cogs of mill-wheels, etc., or any purpose for which very 

 hard wood is used. That which I have before mentioned to 

 grow in the swamps, 3 which has a leaf not unlike a yew and 

 bears small bunches of berries, is tall, straight, and thick 

 enough 'to make masts for vessels of any size, and seems like- 

 wise by the straight direction of the fibres to be tough, but it 

 is too heavy. This, however, I have been told, is the case 

 with the pitch-pine in North America, the timber of which 

 this much resembles, and which the North Americans 

 lighten by tapping, and actually use for masts. 



1 Freycinetia Banksii, A. Cunn. 2 Metrosideros robusta, A. Cunn. ; 



3 Podocarpus dacrydioides, A. Cunn. 



