South Sea Islands
Index
Search
Contact us
a very small peice of that that he has broke into the salt water in the ends of all the fingers of one hand and sucks it into his mouth to get with it as much salt water as possible, every now and then taking a small sup of it either out of the palm of his hand or the cocoa nut shell. In the mean time one of the standers by has prepard a young cocoa nut by peeling of the outer rind with his teeth (an operation which at first appears very surprizing to Europeans but depends so much upon a sl[e]ight that before we left the Islands many of us were ourselves able to do it, even myself who can scarce crack a nut) which when he chuses to drink he takes from him and boring a hole through the shell with his finger or breaking the nut with a stone drinks or sucks out the water. When he has eat his bread fruit and fish he begins with his plantains, one of which makes no more than a mouthful if they are as big as black puddings; if he has apples a shell is nescessary to peel them, one is pickd of the ground where they are always plenty and tossd to him, with this he scrapes or cutts off the skin rather awkwardly as he wastes almost half the apple in doing it. If he has any tough kind of meat instead of fish he must have a knife,
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 356, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-111.html