eaten by the
inhabitants is dressed in this way."

The sea in those regions affords the natives great variety of fish; the
smaller of which they usually eat raw. They have also lobsters, crabs,
and other shell-fish, all of which they are very fond of. Indeed,
nothing seems to come amiss to them. They even eat what sailors call
_blubbers_, though some of these are so tough that they have to allow
them to become putrid before they can chew them.

Their chief vegetable, the bread-fruit, is so curious a plant that it
merits particular notice. It costs them no more trouble or labour to
procure it than the climbing of a tree. In regard to this tree Cook
says that it does not indeed shoot up spontaneously, but if a man plants
ten of them in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he will
sufficiently fulfil his duty to his own and to future generations.
True, the bread-fruit is not always in season; but when its ready-made
loaves are not to be had, the South-Sea islander has plenty of
cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, and other fruits to supply its place.

The bread-fruit tree is large and beautiful. Its trunk, which is
light-coloured and rough, grows to a height of twelve or twenty feet,
and is sometimes three feet in diameter. Its leaves are broad, dark
green, and a foot or eighteen inches long. The fruit, about the size of
a child's head, is round, covered with a rough rind, and is at first of
a light pea-green hue; subsequently it changes to brown, and when fully
ripe, assumes a rich yellow colour. It hangs to the branches singly, or
in clusters of two or three together. One of these magnificent trees,
clothed with its dark shining leaves and loaded with many hundreds of
large light green or yellowish fruit, is one of the most beautiful
objects to be met with among the islands of the south.

The pulp of the bread-fruit between the rind and the core is all
eatable. The core itself, which is about the size and shape of the
handle of a knife, is uneatable. The bread-fruit is never eaten raw.
The usual mode of dressing it is to remove the rind and the core, divide
the pulp into three or four pieces, and bake it in an oven similar to
the one just described. When taken out, in somewhat less than an hour,
the outside of the fruit is nicely browned, and the inner part so
strongly resembles the crumb of wheaten bread as to have suggested the
name of the tree. It is not, however, quite so pleasant to the taste