Inhabitants of Otaheite
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relish to roasted bread-fruit, with which it is frequently beaten up. They have abundance of rats, but, as far as I could discover, these make no part of their food. The river affords them good mullet, but they are neither large nor in plenty. They find conchs, muscles, and other shell-fish on the reef, which they gather at low water, and eat raw with bread-fruit before they come on shore. They have also very fine cray-fish, and they catch with lines, and hooks of mother of pearl, at a little distance from the shore, parrot-fish, groopers, and many other sorts, of which they are so fond that we could seldom prevail upon them to sell us a few at any price. They have also nets of an enormous size, with very small meshes, and with these they catch abundance of small fish about the size of sardines; but while they were using both nets and lines with great success, we could not catch a single fish with either. We procured some of their hooks and lines, but for want of their art we were still disappointed.
The manner in which they dress their food is this: they kindle a fire by rubbing the end of one piece of dry wood upon the side of another, in the same manner as our carpenters whet a chissel; then they dig a pit about half a foot deep, and two or three yards in circumference: they pave the bottom with large pebble stones, which they lay down very smooth and even, and then kindle a fire in it with dry wood, leaves, and the husks of the cocoa-nut. When the stones are sufficiently heated, they take out the embers, and rake up the ashes on every side; then they cover the stones with a layer of green cocoa-nut-tree leaves, and wrap up the animal that is to be dressed in the leaves of the plantain; if it is a small hog they wrap it up whole, if a large one they split it. When it is placed in the pit, they cover it with the hot embers, and lay upon them bread-fruit and yams, which are
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 483, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/483.html