138 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS cu. vir 
Custom has, I suppose, made this agreeable to their palates, 
though we disliked it extremely ; we seldom saw them make 
a meal without some of it in some shape or form. 
As the whole making of this mahie, as they call it, 
depends upon fermentation, I suppose it does not always 
succeed; it is always done by the old women, who make a 
kind of superstitious mystery of it, no one except the people 
employed by them being allowed to come even into that 
part of the house where it is. I myself spoiled a large 
heap of it only by inadvertently touching some leaves that 
lay upon it as I walked by the outside of the house where 
it was; the old directress of it told me that from that 
circumstance it would most certainly fail, and immediately 
pulled it down before my face, who did less regret 
the mischief I had done, as it gave me an opportunity of 
seeing the preparation, which, perhaps, I should not other- 
wise have been allowed to do. 
To this plain diet, prepared with so much simplicity, 
salt water is the universal sauce; those who live at the 
greatest distance from the sea are never without it, keeping 
it in large bamboos set up against the sides of their houses. 
When they eat, a cocoanut-shell full of it always stands 
near them, into which they dip every morsel, especially of 
fish, and often leave the whole soaking in it, drinking at 
intervals large sups of it out of their hands, so that a man 
may use half a pint of it at a meal. They have also a 
sauce made of the kernels of cocoanuts fermented until 
they dissolve into a buttery paste, and beaten up with salt 
water; the taste of this is very strong, and at first was to 
me most abominably nauseous. A very little use, however, 
reconciled me to it, so much so that I should almost prefer 
it to our own sauces with fish. It is not common among 
them, possibly it is thought ill-management among them to 
use cocoanuts so lavishly, or we were on the islands at a 
time when they were scarcely ripe enough for this purpose. 
Small fish they often eat raw, and sometimes large ones. 
I myself, by being constantly with them, learnt to do the 
same, insomuch that I have often made meals of raw fish 
