e one of
his attendants has prepared a young cocoa-nut, by peeling off the outer
rind with his teeth, an operation which to an European appears very
surprising; but it depends so much upon sleight, that many or us were
able to do it before we left the island, and some that could scarcely
crack a filbert: The master, when he chuses to drink, takes the
cocoa-nut thus prepared, and boring a hole through the shell with his
finger, or breaking it with a stone, he sucks out the liquor. When he
has eaten his bread-fruit and fish, he begins with his plantains, one of
which makes but a mouthful, though it be as big as a black-pudding; if
instead of plantains he has apples, he never tastes them till they have
been pared; to do this a shell is picked up from the ground, where they
are always in plenty, and tossed to him by an attendant: He immediately
begins to cut or scrape off the rind, but so awkwardly that great part
of the fruit is wasted. If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have
some succedaneum for a knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece
of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he makes the necessary implement by
splitting it transversely with his nail. While all this has been doing,
some of his attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a
stone-pestle upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and
sprinkled from time to time with water, it is reduced to the consistence
of a soft paste, and is then put into a vessel somewhat like a butcher's
tray, and either made up alone, or mixed with banana or mahie, according
to the taste of the master, by pouring water upon it by degrees and
squeezing it often through the hand: Under this operation it acquires
the consistence of a thick custard, and a large cocoa-nut shell full of
it being set before him, he sips it as we should do a jelly if we had
no spoon to take it from the glass: The meal is then finished by again
washing his hands and his mouth. After which the cocoa-nut shells are
cleaned, and every thing that is left is replaced in the basket.

The quantity of food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious: I
have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three
bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains
or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five
round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as
substantial as the thickest unbaked custard. This is so e