re 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. These tapers are most ingeniously made. There
is a nut abounding in the valley, called by the Typees 'armor', closely
resembling our common horse-chestnut. The shell is broken, and the
contents extracted whole. Any number of these are strung at pleasure
upon the long elastic fibre that traverses the branches of the cocoanut
tree. Some of these tapers are eight or ten feet in length; but being
perfectly flexible, one end is held in a coil, while the other is
lighted. The nut burns with a fitful bluish flame, and the oil that it
contains is exhausted in about ten minutes. As one burns down, the next
becomes ignited, and the ashes of the former are knocked into a cocoanut
shell kept for the purpose. This primitive candle requires continual
attention, and must be constantly held in the hand. The person so
employed marks the lapse of time by the number of nuts consumed, which
is easily learned by counting the bits of tappa distributed at regular
intervals along the string.

I grieve to state so distressing a fact, but the inhabitants of
Typee were in the habit of devouring fish much in the same way that
a civilized being would eat a radish, and without any more previous
preparation. They eat it raw; scales, bones, gills, and all the inside.
The fish is held by the tail, and the head being introduced into the
mouth, the animal disappears with a rapidity that would at first nearly
lead one to imagine it had been launched bodily down the throat.

Raw fish! Shall I ever forget my sensations when I first saw my island
beauty devour one. Oh, heavens! Fayaway, how could you ever have
contracted so vile a habit? However, after the first shock had subsided,
the custom grew less odious in my eyes, and I soon accustomed myself to
the sight. Let no one imagine, however, that the lovely Fayaway was in
the habit of swallowing great vulgar-looking fishes: oh, no; with her
beautiful small hand she would clasp a delicate, little, golden-hued
love of a fish and eat it as elegantly and as innocently as though it
were a Naples biscuit. But alas! it was after all a raw fish; and all I
can say is, that Fayaway ate it in a more ladylike m