266 FIREj COOKING, AND VESSELS; 



that it could be made hot, than that it could be made solid/' ^ 

 No doubt the natives were surprised at hot water coming out 

 of so unlikely a place, but the world seems to have accepted 

 both the story and the inference without stopping to consider 

 that hot water could not be much of a novelty among people, 

 to whom boiled pudding was an article of daily food. Captain 

 Wallis's story (as is so commonly the case with accounts of 

 savages) may be matched elsewhere. " And we went now/' 

 says Kotzebue, in the account of his visit to the Radack islands, 

 " to Earick's dwelling, where the kettle had already been set 

 on the fire, and the natives were assembled round it, looking 

 at the boiling water, which seemed to them alive." Yet on 

 another island of the same chain it is remarked that the mo- 

 gomuh is made by drying the root of a plant, and pressing' the 

 meal into lumps ; when it is to be eaten, some of this is broken 

 off, stirred with water in a cocoa-nut shell, and boiled till it 

 swells up into a thick porridge {" und kocht ihn, bis er zu 

 einem dicken Brei aufquillt,"), etc.^ 



Thouo-h the natives of the islands mentioned, and no doubt 

 of many others, were still stone-boilers in Cook's time, pottery 

 had already made its appearance in Polynesia, in districts so 

 situated that the art may reasonably be supposed to have tra- 

 velled from island to island from the Eastern Archipelago, 

 where perhaps the Malays received it from Asia. By Cook 

 and later explorers earthen vessels were found in the Pelew, 

 Fiji, and Tonga groups, and in New Caledonia.^ By this time 

 it is likely that these and European vessels may have put an 

 end to stone-boiling in Polynesia, so that its displacement by 

 the introduction of pottery and metal will have taken place by 

 the same combination of the influence of neighbouring tribes 

 and of Europeans which have produced a similar efiect in North 

 America. 



This is what history tells us of the art, but there is some 

 slight evidence which may, perhaps, lead us to infer that the 



> Wallis, H., vol. i. pp. 246, 264. ^ Eotzebue, vol. ii. pp. 47, 65. 



^ Cook, Second Voy., vol. i. p. 214 ; vol. ii. p. 105. Third Voy., vol. i. p. 375. 

 Klemm, C. G., vol. iv. p. 272. Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 69. Turner, p. 424. 

 Mariner, vol. ii. p. 272. Keate, p. 336. 



