228 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND cuap. x 
one delicious meal. These, with the fern roots and one 
vegetable (Pandanus)* totally unknown in Europe, which, 
though eaten by the natives, no European will probably 
ever relish, are the whole of the vegetables which I know 
to be eatable, except those which they cultivate and have 
probably brought with them from the country from whence 
they themselves originally come. 
Nor does their cultivated ground produce many species 
of esculent plants; three only have I seen, yams, sweet 
potatoes, and cocos, all three well known and much esteemed 
in both the East and West Indies. Of these, especially the 
two former, they cultivate often patches of many acres, and 
I believe that any ship that found itself to the northward 
in the autumn, about the time of digging them up, might 
purchase any quantity. They also cultivate gourds, the 
fruits of which serve to make bottles, jugs, etc., and a very 
small quantity of the Chinese paper mulberry tree. 
Fruits they have none, except I should reckon a few 
kinds of insipid berries which had neither sweetness nor 
flavour to recommend them, and which none but the boys 
took the pains to gather. 
The woods, however, abound in excellent timber, fit for 
any kind of building in size, grain, and apparent durability. 
One, which bears a very conspicuous scarlet flower ? made up 
of many threads, and which is as big as an oak in England, 
has a very heavy hard wood which seems well adapted for 
the cogs of mill-wheels, etc., or any purpose for which very 
hard wood is used. That which I have before mentioned to 
grow in the swamps,’ which has a leaf not unlike a yew and 
bears small bunches of berries, is tall, straight, and thick 
enough to make masts for vessels of any size, and seems like- 
wise by the straight direction of the fibres to be tough, but it 
is too heavy. This, however, I have been told, is the case 
with the pitch-pine in North America, the timber of which 
this much resembles, and which the North Americans 
lighten by tapping, and actually use for masts. 
1 Freycinetia Banksti, A. Cunn. 2 Metrosideros robusta, A. Cunn. 
3 Podocarpus dacrydioides, A. Cunn, 
