Their food consists of pork, poultry, dog's flesh, and fish,
bread-fruit, bananas, plantains, yams, apples, and a sour fruit, which,
though not pleasant by itself, gives an agreeable relish to roasted
bread-fruit, with which it is frequently beaten up. They have abundance
of rats, but, as far as I could discover, these make no part of their
food. The river affords them good mullet, but they are neither large nor
in plenty. They find conchs, mussels, and other shellfish on the reef,
which they gather at low-water, and eat raw with bread-fruit before they
come on shore. They have also very fine cray-fish, and they catch with
lines, and hooks of mother-of-pearl, at a little distance from the
shore, parrrot-fish, groopers, and many other sorts, of which they are
so fond that we could seldom prevail upon them to sell us a few at any
price. They have also nets of an enormous size, with very small meshes,
and with these they catch abundance of small fish about the size of
sardines; but while they were using both nets and lines with great
success, We could not catch a single fish with either. We procured some
of their hooks and lines, but for want of their art we were still
disappointed.

The manner in which they dress their food is this: They kindle a fire by
rubbing the end of one piece of dry wood, upon the side of another, in
the same manner as our carpenters whet a chissel; then they dig a pit
about half a foot deep, and two or three yards in circumference: They
pave the bottom with large pebble stones, which they lay down very
smooth and even, and then kindle a fire in it with dry wood, leaves, and
the husks of the cocoa-nut. When the stones are sufficiently heated,
they take out the embers, and rake up the ashes on every side; then they
cover the stones with a layer of green cocoa-nut tree leaves, and wrap
up the animal that is to be dressed in the leaves of the plantain; if it
is a small hog they wrap it up whole; if a large one they split it. When
it is placed in the pit, they cover it with the hot embers, and lay upon
them bread-fruit and yams, which are also wrapped up in the leaves of
the plantain: Over these they spread the remainder of the embers, mixing
among them some of the hot stones, with more cocoa-nut tree leaves upon
them, and then close all up with earth, so that the heat is kept in.
After a time proportioned to the size of what is dressing, the oven is
opened, and the meat taken out, which is tender, f