rest by different morsels, and between each, at least very frequently,
takes a small sup of the salt-water, either out of the cocoa-nut shell,
or the palm of his hand. In the meantime one of his attendants has
prepared a young cocoa-nut, by peeling off the outer rind with his
teeth, an operation which to an European appears very surprising; but it
depends so much upon sleight, that many of us were able to do it before
we left the island, and some that could scarcely crack a filbert. The
master when he chooses to drink takes the cocoa-nut thus prepared, and
boring a hole through the shell with his fingers, or breaking it with a
stone, he sucks out the liquor. When he has eaten his bread-fruit and
fish, he begins with his plantains, one of which makes but a mouthful,
though it be as big as a black-pudding; if instead of plantains he has
apples, he never tastes them till they have been pared; to do this a
shell is picked up from the ground, where they are always in plenty, and
tossed to him by an attendant. He immediately begins to cut or scrape
off the rind, but so awkwardly that great part of the fruit is wasted.
If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have some succedaneum for a
knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to
him, of which he makes the necessary implement by splitting it
transversely with his nail. While all this has been doing, some of his
attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone pestle
upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and sprinkled from
time to time with water, it is reduced to the consistence of a soft
paste, and is then put into a vessel somewhat like a butcher's tray, and
either made up alone, or mixed with banana or _mahie_, according to the
taste of the master, by pouring water upon it by degrees and squeezing
it often through the hand. Under this operation it acquires the
consistence of a thick custard, and a large cocoa-nut shell full of it
being set before him, he sips it as we should do a jelly if we had no
spoon to take it from the glass. The meal is then finished by again