1770 FOOD-PLANTS 313 
great abundance of the shells of a kind of fruit resembling a 
pine-apple, though its taste was disagreeable enough. It is 
common to all the East Indies, and called by the Dutch 
Pyn appel Boomen (Pandanus). We found also the fruits 
of a low palm? called by the Dutch Moeskruidige Callapus 
(Cycas cireinalis), which they certainly eat, though this fruit is 
so unwholesome that some of our people, who, though fore- 
warned, followed their example and ate one or two of them, 
were violently affected by them; and our hogs, whose con- 
stitutions we thought might be as strong as those of the 
Indians, literally died after having eaten them. It is 
probable, however, that these people have some method of 
preparing them by which their poisonous quality is destroyed, 
as the inhabitants of the East Indian Isles are said to do by 
boiling them, steeping them twenty-four hours in water, 
then drying them, and using them to thicken broth, from 
whence it would seem that the poisonous quality lies entirely 
in the juices, as it does in the roots of the mandihoca or 
cassada of the West Indies, and that when thoroughly 
cleared of them, the pulp remaining may be a wholesome 
and nutritious food. 
Their victuals they generally dress by broiling or toasting 
them upon the coals, so we judged by the remains we saw ; 
they understood, however, the method of baking or stewing 
with hot stones, and sometimes practised it, as we now and 
then saw the pits and burned stones which had been used 
for that purpose. 
We observed that some, though but few, held constantly 
in their mouths the leaves of a herb which they chewed as 
a European does tobacco, or an East Indian betel; what sort 
of a plant it was we had no opportunity of learning, as we 
never saw anything but the chaws, which they took from 
their mouth to show us. It might be of the betel kind, 
and so far as we could judge from the fragments was so ; 
but whatever it was, it was used without any addition, and 
seemed to have no kind of effect upon either the teeth or 
lips of those who used it. 
1 Cycas media, Br., closely allied to C. circinalis, See pp. 299 and 421. 
