FIKE, COOKTXG, AND VESSELS. 265 



not necessary to suppose this to have been found out since 

 Captain Cook's time, as the boiling was probably done before 

 with hot stones.^ 



In several other Polynesian islands, it appears from Cook's 

 journals that stone-boiling was in ordinary use in cookery. 

 The making of a native pudding in Tahiti is thus described. 

 Bread-fruit, ripe plantains, taro, and palm or pandanus nuts, 

 were rasped, scraped, or beaten up fine, and baked separately. 

 A quantity of juice, expressed from cocoa-nut kernels, was put 

 into a large tray or wooden vessel. The other articles, hot 

 from the oven, were deposited in this vessel, and a few hot 

 stones were also put in to make the contents simmer. Few 

 puddings in England, he says, equal these. In the island of 

 Anamooka, they brought him a mess of fish, soup, and yams 

 stewed in cocoa-nut liquor, "probably in a wooden vessel, with 

 hot stones." The practice seems to have existed in the Mar- 

 quesas, and in Huaheine he describes the preparation of a dish 

 of poi in a wooden trough with hot stones." What the Poly- 

 nesian notion of a pudding is, as to size, may be gathered from 

 the account of two missionaries who arrived at the island of 

 Rurutu, and were received by a native who paddled out to 

 meet them through a rough sea, in a wooden po{-dish, seven 

 feet long- and two and a half wide.'^ 



I fear that the Tahitian recipe for making poi must spoil the 

 good old story of Captain Wallis's tea-urn. A native who was 

 breakfasting on board the Dolphin saw the tea-pot filled from 

 the urn, and presently turned the cock again and put his hand 

 underneath, with such eff"ects as may be imagined. Captain 

 Wallis, knowing that the natives had no earthen vessels, and 

 that boiling in a pot over the fire was a novelty to them, and 

 putting all these things together in telling the story, inter- 

 preted the howls of the scalded native as he danced about the 

 cabin, and the astonishment of the rest of the visitors, as ' 

 proving that the Tahitians " having no vessel in which water 

 could be subjected to the action of fire, .... had no more idea 



> Yate, p. 43. 

 . 2 Cook, Third Toy., vol. ii. p. 49 ; vol. i. p. 233. Second Voy., vol. i. p. 310. First 

 Voj. H., vol. ii. p. 254. ^ Tyerman & Bennet, vol. i. p. 493. 



