James's? He that can wisely answer these questions, is at liberty to
return a verdict in the trial of the Otaheitans.--E.]

Of the food eaten here the greater part is vegetable. Here are no tame
animals except hogs, dogs, and poultry, as I have observed before, and
these are by no means plenty. When a chief kills a hog, if is almost
equally divided among his dependants; and as they are very numerous, the
share of each individual at these feasts, which are not frequent, must
necessarily be small. Dogs and fowls fall somewhat more frequently to
the share of the common people. I cannot much commend the flavour of
their fowls; but we all agreed, that a South Sea dog was little inferior
to an English lamb; their excellence is probably owing to their being
kept up, and fed wholly upon vegetables. The sea affords them a great
variety of fish. The smaller fish, when they catch any, are generally
eaten raw, as we eat oysters; and nothing that the sea produces comes
amiss to them: They are fond of lobsters, crabs, and other shell-fish,
which are found upon the coast; and they will eat not only sea-insects,
but what the seamen call _blubbers_, though some of them are so tough,
that they are obliged, to suffer them to become putrid before they can
be chewed. Of the many vegetables that have been mentioned already as
serving them for food, the principal is the bread-fruit, to procure
which costs them no trouble or labour but climbing a tree: The tree
which produces it, does not indeed shoot up spontaneously; but if a man
plants ten of them in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he
will as completely fulfil his duty to his own and future generations, as
the natives of our less temperate climate can do by ploughing in the
cold of winter, and reaping in the summer's heat, as often as these
seasons return; even if, after he has procured bread for his present
household, he should convert a surplus into money, and lay it up for his
children.