ON MATICO. 
107 
very attentive one. In the voyage of Captain Cook, you 
have a description of cava-dr inking, but the best account 
of the employment of if is given by Mariner, in his interest- 
ing History of the Tonga Islands, in which he resided for 
many years; it is as follows : 
"The root is split up with an axe, or any such instrument, 
into small pieces ; and being thus sufficiently divided and 
scraped clean with mussel-shells, &c., is handed out to those 
in attendance to be chewed. There is now heard an uni- 
versal buzz throughout a part of the company, which forms 
a curious contrast to the silence that reigned before j several 
crying out, ( Give me some cava ! give me cava !' — each of 
those who intend to chew it crying out for some to be hand- 
ed to them. No one offers to chew the cava, but young 
persons who have good teeth, clean mouths, and have no 
colds ; women frequently assist. It is astonishing how re- 
markably dry they preserve the root, while it is undergoing 
this process of mastication. In about two minutes, each 
person having chewed his quantity, takes it out of his mouth 
with his hand, and puts it on a piece of plantain or banana 
leaf, or sometimes he raises the leaf to his mouth, and puts it 
off his tongue in the form of a ball of tolerable consistence, 
particularly if it be dry cava root. The different ^portions 
of cava being now all chewed, which is known by the si- 
lence that ensues, a wooden bowl, of about three feet in di- 
ameter and about one foot in depth in the centre, is placed 
on the ground before the man who is to make the infusion. 
In the meanwhile, each person who sits at any distance, 
passes on his portion of chewed root, so that it is conveyed 
from one to another, till it is received by three or four per- 
sons, who are actively engaged going from one side to the 
other collecting it, and depositing it in the wooden bowl; it 
is not, however, thrown in promiscuously, but in such a 
way that each portion is distinct and separate from the rest, 
till at length the whole inside of the vessel becomes thickly 
studded, beginning at the bottom and going up on every 
