Page 14

Cook's Descriptions of Places

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King Georges Island (continued) is this last is made from bread fruit in the following manner.   this fruit from what I can find remains in season only 8 or 9 months in the year and as it is the chief support of the inhabitants a reserve of food must be made for those months when they are without it.   to do this the fruit is gather'd when upon the point of ripening, after the rinde is scraped off it is laid in heaps and cover'd close with leaves where it under goes a fermentation and becomes soft and disagreably sweet, the core is then taken out and the rest of the fruit thrown into a hole dug for that purpose the sides and bottom of which are neatly laid with grass   the whole is cover'd with leaves and heavy stones laid upon them   here it under goes a second fermentaition and becomes sourish in which condition they say it will keep good 10 or 12 Months, as they want to use it they make it into balls which they wrap up in leaves and bake in the same manner as they do the fruit from the tree   it is then ready for eating either hot or cold and hath a sour and disagreable taste.   in this last state it will keep good a Month or six Weeks.   it is calld by them Mahai and they seldom make a meal without some of it one way or a a nother. To this plain diat salt water is the Unive^rsal sauce, hardly any one sits down to a meal without a cocoa nut shell full of it standing by them into which they dip most of what they eat especialy fish, drinking at intervals large supps of it out of their hands, so that a man may use half a pint at a Meal — Voyaging Accounts © Transcribed from National Library of Australia Manuscript 1 page 81, 2004 Published by South Seas To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/cook_remarks-014