136 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cuz. vi 
yams ; cocos, a kind of arum, known in the Hast Indies by 
the name of Habava ;* a fruit known there by the name of 
eng. mallow,? and considered most delicious; sugar-cane, 
which the inhabitants eat raw; a root of the salop kind, 
called by the inhabitants pea;? the root also of a plant 
called ethee; and a fruit in a pod like a large hull of a 
kidney bean,* which, when roasted, eats much like a chestnut, 
and is called ahee. Besides these there is the fruit of a tree 
called wharra,> in appearance like a pine-apple; the fruit of 
a tree called nono; the roots, and perhaps leaves of a fern; 
and the roots of a plant called ¢theve: which four are eaten 
only by the poorer sort of people in times of scarcity. 
Of tame animals they have hogs, fowls, and dogs, which 
latter we learned to eat from them; and few were there of 
the nicest of us but allowed that a South Sea dog was next 
to an English lamb. This indeed must be said in their 
favour, that they live entirely upon vegetables ; probably our 
dogs in England would not eat half as well. Their pork 
certainly is most excellent, though sometimes too fat; their 
fowls are not a bit better, rather worse maybe, than ours 
at home, and often very tough. Though they seem to 
esteem flesh very highly, yet in all the islands I have seen, 
the quantity they have of it is very unequal to the 
number of their people; it is therefore seldom used among 
them, even the principal chiefs do not have it every day or 
even every week, though some of them had pigs that we 
saw quartered upon different estates, as we send cocks to 
walk in England. When any of these chiefs kills a hog, 
it seems to be divided almost equally among all his 
dependents, he himself taking little more than the rest. 
Vegetables are their chief food, and of these they eat a large 
quantity. 
Cookery seems to have been but little studied here; 
they have only two methods of applying fire. Broiling 
1 Colocasia antiquorum, Schott., better known by its New Zealand name 
taro (see p. 253). * Hibiscus esculentus, Linn. ?. 
3 Tacca pinnatifida, Forst. 4 Lablab vulgaris, Savi. 
5 Pandanus odoratissimus, Linn. f. 
