102 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF 



Turtles are taken in the season on the beaches ; and shell-fish, with 

 the sea-slug or biche de mar, are obtained on the reefs by diving. 



Their vegetable food consists of cocoa-nuts and pandanus, and a 

 variety of the taro, with a small quantity of the bread-fruit. The 

 preparation of these engages a great deal of their attention, and that 

 of the pandanus-nut in particular. When prepared, it is called kabul 

 and karapapa. The inner or edible portions of these nuts are sliced 

 off, and baked in an oven for several hours, till they are quite hard ; 

 they are then taken out, laid on a clean mat, and pounded with a 

 large pestle to the consistency of dough ; this is spread out upon 

 mats into the form of sheets, about three feet long by eighteen inches 

 wide, and a quarter of an inch thick ; these sheets are again laid on 

 mats in the sun to dry, and at night are rolled up, and put away in 

 an oven to bake. This process is repeated for two days, by which 

 time the plates become as hard and unyielding as a board, and are of 

 a reddish brown colour. Those plates called kabul are put away in 

 the loft of their houses, but are every few days brought out into the 

 sun to insure their being kept dry. At the close of the season, they 

 are reduced to a powder, not unlike fine sawdust. This is put 

 up in rolls, from eight to ten feet long, and six to twelve inches in 

 diameter, bound with leaves of the pandanus, and made so smooth 

 and round that they look like pillars of brown stone : in this state the 

 preparation is called karapapa, and will keep for years. This is the 

 principal dependence of the natives in seasons of scarcity, and these 

 rolls of karapapa are used as a circulating medium, in which wages 

 and tributes to the chiefs are paid. 



They make a kind of broth with karapapa and kamoimoi (molasses), 

 which the natives drink in great quantities. 



Tuea is another kind of kabul, but made of a better variety of 

 pandanus : this is beaten out into thin sheets, resembling dark brown 

 paper, or like our cloth, which is also rolled up and put away ; before 

 being eaten, it is soaked for several hours in the milk of the cocoa- 

 nut, and is esteemed a dainty. The kabul is generally chewed, and 

 softens in the mouth, the pulp being dissolved, while the large mass 

 of woody fibre remains : it has a sweetish taste. 



The bread-fruit is generally roasted on hot stones, but not covered 

 with earth, as at the other islands. After it is cooked, it is crushed 

 between the folds of a mat. It is the same variety that is found at 

 the Samoan Islands, which strengthens the opinion that part of these 

 natives came from that quarter. 



