The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea by Robert Wood Williamson
page 73 of 414 (17%)
page 73 of 414 (17%)
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under their appropriate headings; but I will here deal with a few
of them. Food. The vegetable foods of the Mafulu people are sweet potato and other plants of the same type, yam and other foods of the same type, taro and other foods of that type, banana of different sorts, sugar-cane, a kind of wild native bean, a cultivated reed-like plant with an asparagus flavour (what it is I do not know), several plants of the pumpkin and cucumber type, one of them being very small, like a gherkin, fruit from two different species of Pandanus, almonds, the fruit of the _malage_ (described later on), and others, both cultivated and wild. The sugar-cane is specially eaten by them when working in the gardens. [49] Their animal food consists of wild pig and, on occasions, village pig, a small form of cassowary, kangaroo, a small kind of wallaby, kangaroo rat, "iguana," an animal called _gaivale_ (I could not find out what this is), various wild birds, fish, eels, mice, a large species of snake and other things. Their staple drink is water, but when travelling they cut down a species of bamboo, and drink the watery fluid which it contains. After boiling any food in bamboo stems they drink the water which has been used for the purpose, and which has become a sort of thin flavoured soup. |
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