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An excursion into the interior, in which we make many valuable and interesting discoveries We get a dreadful fright The bread-fruit tree Wonderful peculiarity of some of the fruit-trees Signs of former inhabitants. Our first care, after breakfast, was to place the few articles we possessed in the crevice of a rock at the farther end of a small cave which we discovered near our encampment.
When old Marheyo received his share of the spoils, immediate preparations were made for a midnight banquet; calabashes of poee-poee were filled to the brim; green bread-fruit were roasted; and a huge cake of 'amar' was cut up with a sliver of bamboo and laid out on an immense banana-leaf. At this supper we were lighted by several of the native tapers, held in the hands of young girls.
From pretty huts of plaited reeds, under the shade of bread-fruit trees, the women, some of them with children in their arms, were flying to conceal themselves in the forest. Such was the commotion our appearance occasioned in this little community.
A fine dust from the volcano floats in the air and the pale moonlight plays softly on the smooth surface of the bay, filling the atmosphere with silver, so that everything shines in the white light, the long, flat point, the forest; even the bread-fruit tree on the slope, whose outline cuts sharply into the brightness, is not black, but a darker silver.
Among the most valuable are the bread-fruit, just now ripe, the trees of which my uncle planted when he first came to the island. He had also grown some tea-plants, and among our other occupations I forgot to mention, was preparing the leaves according to the Chinese mode. The beverage does not taste very strong, but it has a nice flavour, and will answer its purpose very well.
The fire-god, his subject, unpropitious to man, taking advantage of this circumstance, made an effort to repulse the new-comers. He approached them with terrible gestures, and asked whence they came. They answered "We come from a country which abounds in hogs, dogs, cocoa-nuts, and bread-fruit.
As the finest kinds of bananas, pineapples, and bread-fruit are almost seedless, it is probable that the nutriment that would have been required for the formation of the seeds has been expended in producing larger and more succulent fruits.
Accordingly not a moment passed but the transplanted boughs I have mentioned were rifled by the throng of the fruit they certainly had never borne before. Calabashes of poee-poee were continually being replenished from the extensive receptacle in which that article was stored, and multitudes of little fires were kindled about the Ti for the purpose of roasting the bread-fruit.
The bread-nuts look on the outside like the bread-fruit, but the inside contains a great mass of closely packed nuts like large chestnuts. These are not good raw, but are fine when baked or boiled. We have often heard people speak of butter and cheese being colored, but did not know that the dairyman was obliged to send to the West Indies for his dye.
The women wore the hair short, and, on occasions, sometimes had it raised and stiffened with a mixture of scented oil and the gum of the bread-fruit tree. It was fashionable, also, for young women to have a small twisted lock of hair, with a curl at the end of it, hanging from the left temple.
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