Food of the New Zealanders. 31 
even that precaution, deeping with their women and children 
under bufhes, with their weapons ranged round them, in the 
manner that has already been defcribed. The party confiding 
of forty or fifty, whom we faw at Mercury Bay, in a diftrici 
which the natives call Opoorage, never ereCted the lead fhelter 
while we daid there, though it fometimes rained incelfantly for 
four and twenty hours together. 
The articles of their food have been enumerated already ; 
the principal, which to them is what bread is to the inhabi- 
tants of Europe, is the roots of the fern which grows upon 
the hills, and is nearly the fame with what grows upon our 
high commons in England, and’ is called indifferently fern, 
bracken, or brakes. The birds which fometimes ferve them 
for a fead, are chiefly penguins and albatrodes, with a few 
other fpecies that have been occafionally mentioned in this 
narrative. 
Having no veffel in which water can be boiled, their cooke- 
ry condds wholly of baking and roading. They bake nearly 
in the fame manner as the inhabitants of the South Seas, and 
to the account that has been already given of their roading, 
nothing need be added, but that the long fewer or fpit, to 
which the flefh is fadened, is placed doping towards the dre, 
by fetting one done againd the bottom of it, and fupporting 
it near the middle with another, by the moving of which to a 
greater or lefs didance from the end, the degree of obliquity 
is increafed, or diminifhed, at pjeafure. 
To the northward, as I have obferved, there are plantations 
of yams, fweet potatoes, and coccos, but we faw no Inch to the 
fouthward ; the inhabitants therefore of that part of the 
country mud fubfid wholly upon fern root and filh, except the 
fcanty and accidental refource which they may find in fea 
fowl and dpgs ; and that fern and filh are not to be procured 
at all feafons of the year, even at the fea fide, and upon the 
neighbouring hills, is manifed from the dores of both that we 
faw laid up dry, and the reluctance which feme of them ex- 
p reded at felling any part of them to us when we offered to 
purchafe them, at lead the fife, for fea dores : and this parti-* 
cular feems to confirm my opinion that this country fcarcely 
fudains the prefent number of its inhabitants, who are urged to 
perpetual hodilities by hunger, which naturally prompted them 
to eat the dead bodies of thofe who were dain in the conted. 
Water is their univerfal and only liquor, as far as we could 
difcover, and if they have really no means of intoxication, 
they are, in this particular, happy beyond any other people 
that we have yet feen or heard of. 
As there is perhaps no fource of difeafe either critical or 
chronic, but intemperance and inactivity, it cannot be though^ 
grange that thei'e people enjoy perfect ajid uninterrupted 
health j 
