547 



introduced sweet potatoes and pawpaw constitute an extremely 

 important item in native housekeeping. 



The bananas are eaten ripe as a fruit, but their chief 

 culinary use is to be eaten as vegetables, for which purpose 

 they are used in the green, unripe state. They are not peeled, 

 but only cleaned and their ends cut off. The taro is cleaned, 

 scraped, and, when it is very bulky, chopped into large chunks. 

 The same applies to the yam and Taitu roots, and to the sweet 

 potato — a recent introduction to Papuan soil. The pawpaw 

 is also used green, as a vegetable. The scraping of the taro, 

 yam, and Taitu is done with a Gypraea tigris shell (Guna) 

 cut in half and sharpened. Taro and yams are chopped into 

 pieces with a pearl shell fMeleac/rina sp. ; in Mailu, Grdva) 

 sharpened into a fine blade. The scraping of bananas is also 

 performed with a shell, of which two kinds are used, one very 

 small and called Ku'i'i, and the other slightly larger and 

 called Xika'i'i; both are of the same shape. 



A 



Fig. 18. 



Fig. 17. 



Vegetable and Fruit Scrapers. 



Fig. 17. Guna, a vegetable scraper, made of the top half 

 of a Cypraea shell, sharpened into a blade at the end A. 



Fig. 18. A small, naturally sharp-edged, bivalve shell, used 

 as scraper; called K\CVi (smaller species) and Xika^Vi (larger 

 ispecies). 



Cooking and Dishing-up. — If the food is boiled, both 

 vegetable and animal foods are cooked in the same pot. There 

 are three methods of cooking used by the Mailu natives: 

 boiling, roasting, and baking with hot stones. 



Boiling (Ddridari; in Motu, Nadua) is done in one of the 

 large earthenware pots, v/hich are manufactured on Toulon 

 Island and in its direct colonies (Domdra, Oraido, and 

 s2 



