2 64 yiRK, COOKING^ A\D VESSELS. 



The Kamcliadals, like some American tribes, used hollowed 

 wooden troughs for the purpose, and long resisted the use of 

 the iron cooking pots of the Russians, considering* that the food 

 only kept its flavour properly when dressed in the old-fashioned 

 way.^ 



-■ Thus the existence of a great district of Stone-Boilers in 

 Northern Asia and America is made out by direct evidence, 

 but beside this we know of the practice in a southern district 

 of the world. 



Captain Cook made a remark concerning the New Zealanders, 

 that " having no vessel in which water can be boiled, their 

 cooking consists wholly of baking and roasting.^ The inference 

 that people who have no vessel that will stand the fire must 

 therefore be unable to boil food, may, for anything I know, be 

 true when he makes it in Tierra del Fuego and in Australia,^ 

 but in New Zealand it breaks down, for there is evidence that 

 the Maoris knew the art of stone-boiling, though they used it 

 but little. It is found among them under circumstances which 

 give no ground for supposing that it was introduced after Cap- 

 tain Cook's visit. The curious dried human heads of New 

 Zealand, which excel any mummies that have ever been made 

 in the preservation of the features of the dead, were first 

 brought over to England by Cook's party. From a careful 

 description of the process of preparing them, made since, it 

 appears that one thing done to them is to throw them " into 

 boiling water, into which red-hot stones are continually^ cast, 

 to keep up the heat;"* and a remark made by another writer 

 places the existence of stone-boiling as a native New Zealand 

 art beyond question. " The New Zealanders, although destitute 

 of vessels in which to boil water, had an ingenious way of heat- 

 ing water to the boiling point, for the purpose of making shell- 

 fish open. This was done by putting red-hot stones into 

 wooden vessels full of water."* When, therefore, we find them 

 boiling and eating the berries of the Laurus taiva, which are 

 harmless when boiled, but poisonous in their raw state, it is 



' Kracheninnikow, p. 30. Erman, Eeise, vol. iii. p. 423. 



- Cook, First Voy. H., toI. iii. p. 5-J ; also Third Yoy., vol. i. p. 158. 



3 First Voy. H., vol. ii. p. 59 ; vol. iii. p. 233. 



'' Yate, • New Zealand/ p. 132. '" Tliomsou, ' New Zealand,' vol. i. p. 160. 



