EATING. 
841 
their noses are generally thrust into the basket as soon as 
the last hand is withdrawn.* 
Baskets appear to have been used in a similar way by the 
ancient Egyptians ; they are represented in their paintings, 
as well as alluded to in Scripture. The chief baker had in 
his dream a basket of bakemeats for Pharaoh ; and so in 
Israel, Jehu commanded the elders of Jezreel to bring him 
the heads of Ahab's sons in baskets ; and the Israelite was 
blessed in his basket and store. 
Formerly they were much pinched for food in winter; 
that period went by the name of the grumbling months , they 
had no other name for them, being a blank in their calendar, 
as they could do nothing but sit in their smoky huts, with 
eyes always filled with tears. 
In times of scarcity, the only food they had to depend 
upon was fern -root and shell fish. The traveller is often 
surprised, as he journeys along the coast, by the large heaps 
of shells which he sees on almost every tuound he passes ; 
these are records of bygone scarcity, and frequently he will 
find fragments of human bones mixed with them, it was 
at such times that the least offence sufficed to cause an 
angry and hungry savage to knock his slave on the head, 
to satisfy the cravings of hunger ; though cannibalism was 
practised on a grand scale, still there were some even of 
the chiefs who could not bear the smell or sight of human 
flesh without being sick. It is remarkable that some na- 
tives cannot eat the pigeon, when it feeds on the young 
leaves of the Tcowai , the New Zealand laburnum, Edwardsia 
micro jphylla ; the Nga ti hine kino, a hapu of the Nga ti 
* Vigne, in his travels in Cashmere, thus describes a meal given him by the 
Rajah of Tira, vol. i, page 109 : — “They did not eat with me themselves, but 
a table was placed for me beside them, and they talked to me during the repast, 
which was served up in dishes made of dock leaves, sewn together, and my 
drinking cup was of the same material. The Sikhs are less particular in these 
matters than the Hindus, and will eat twice, and oftener, out of the same plate ; 
but the Hindus, more especially the Brahmin or the Rajput, will not eat twice 
out of any vessel that cannot be cleansed with earth : when, therefore, they 
play the host, the Hindus cause their dishes to be made of dock leaves, which 
are thrown away after they have been used.” 
