United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Forty square feet of taro, it is estimated, will support a person for a year, and a square mile of taro will feed over 15,000 Hawaiians. By-the-way, you will hear the natives say kalo when they speak of taro; and by this and other words in common use you will presently learn of a curious obliquity in their hearing.
Two women were shrimping in the river, the children were swimming to school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat sewing and making leis on the ground.
Supper was ready for us kalo, yams, spatchcock, poi, coffee, rolls, and Oregon kippered salmon; and when I told Halemanu that the spatchcock and salmon reminded me of home, he was quite pleased, and said he would provide the same for breakfast to-morrow.
The native life with which one comes constantly in contact, is very interesting. The men do whatever hard work is done in cultivating the kalo patches and pounding the kalo. Thus kalo, the Arum esculentum, forms the national diet. A Hawaiian could not exist without his calabash of poi.
"How are you, rye?" she asked, stopping with effort in the middle of the room, for her impulse was to rush forward and gather him to her heaving bosom. "Have you taken drows, my precious lord?" "What do you mean by drows, Chaldea?" "Poison, no less. You look drabbed, for sure." "Drabbed?" "Poisoned. But I waste the kalo jib on you, my Gorgious.
A hole in the ground is lined with stones, wood is burned within it, and when the rude oven has been sufficiently heated, the pig, chicken, breadfruit, or kalo, wrapped in ti leaves is put in, a little water is thrown on, and the whole is covered up. It is a slow but sure process.
"The puro beng is a fino mush, if you will have the kalo jib!" and with a wild cry worthy of a banshee she disappeared and was seen running unsteadily across the lawn. Lambert shrugged his shoulders again and turned to his miserable cousin, who had sat down with a dogged look on his fat face. "I have got rid of her because I wish to save the family name from disgrace," said Lambert quietly.
It only required some suggestion of decay, and the rustle of a fallen leaf now and then, to make it an exact reproduction of a fine day in our English October. The forest was enlivened by many natives bound for Hilo, driving horses loaded with cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, live fowls, poi and kalo, while others with difficulty urged garlanded pigs in the same direction, all as presents for the king.
I was amused to see him afterwards, sitting on a mat among his family and dependants, helping himself to poi from a calabash with his fingers. He gave us for supper delicious river fish fried, boiled kalo, and Waipio coffee with boiled milk.
I am now writing inside the house, with a hollowed stone, with some beef fat and a wick in it, for a light, and two youths seem delegated to attend upon me. One holds my ink, and if I look up, the other rushes for something that I am supposed to want. They brought me a kalo leaf containing a number of living freshwater shrimps, and were quite surprised when I did not eat them. WAIPIO, March 5th.
Word Of The Day