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In the sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay sweating and snorting under a blanket, his nose and mouth tied up with a handkerchief to prevent the escape of his precious soul. In Hawaii there were sorcerers who caught souls of living people, shut them up in calabashes, and gave them to people to eat.
The pretty little ornamented calabashes used, among other purposes, for drinking chocolate out of were called by the Mexicans xicalli, a word which the Spaniards made into jícara, and now use to mean a chocolate-cup; and even the Italians have taken to it, and call a tea-cup a chicchera.
There were mats on the floor not over clean, and half the room was littered and piled with mats rolled up, boxes, bamboos, saddles, blankets, lassos, cocoanuts, kalo roots, bananas, quilts, pans, calabashes, bundles of hard poi in ti leaves, bones, cats, fowls, clothes.
Then the wind changed, and, springing up from the south, drove them wearily back once more in their tracks, and then bore them eastward. For another week they drove before the breeze, feeding on the cocoa-nuts. But the water in the calabashes was gone.
Sometimes the calabashes are polished, carved, dyed or otherwise ornamented. The pulp of the fruit is used as a medicine. One of the most curious and beautiful trees on the island is the traveler's tree. It is so named because it contains in its leaves and at their bases a large quantity of pure water.
It is pretty clear that the earliest drinking vessels used in Europe were neither bowls of earthenware nor shells of fruits, for the cold climate of interglacial times did not permit the growth in northern latitudes of such large natural vessels as gourds, calabashes, bamboos, or coco-nuts.
On two confronting lines, the men in one, the women in the other, a leading couple improvised a song and all took up the refrain. The goombay beat time, and the dancers rattled or tinkled the woody seed-cases of the sand-box tree set on long handles and with each of their lobes painted a separate vivid color; rattles of basketwork; and calabashes filled with pebbles and shells.
The stragglers of the former, in their flight, disencumbered themselves of their yams, and calabashes of palm-wine, which the others, on coming up, amused themselves with breaking to pieces.
In the morning fresh meat was brought to the boys, together with raw yams and other vegetables. There were now other marvels to be shown. Ned had learned, when with the negroes, how to cook in calabashes; and he now got a gourd from the natives, cut it in half, scooped its contents out, and then filled it with water.
Kolimbota, I found, thought favorably of the proposition, and it afterward led to his desertion from us. On the evening of the day in which Manenko arrived, we were delighted by the appearance of Mosantu and an imposing embassy from Masiko. It consisted of all his under-chiefs, and they brought a fine elephant's tusk, two calabashes of honey, and a large piece of blue baize, as a present.
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