ulous expressions of pain and
astonishment; his companions, unable to conceive what was the matter,
staring at him in amaze, and not without some mixture of terror.

One of Oberea's peace-offerings to Mr. Banks, for the robbery of his
clothes committed in her boat, was a fine fat dog, and the way in which
it was prepared and baked was as follows. Tupei, the high priest,
undertook to perform the double office of butcher and cook. He first
killed him by holding his hands close over his mouth and nose for the
space of a quarter of an hour. A hole was then made in the ground about
a foot deep, in which a fire was kindled, and some small stones placed
in layers, alternately with the wood, to be heated. The dog was then
singed, scraped with a shell, and the hair taken off as clean as if he
had been scalded in hot water. He was then cut up with the same
instrument, and his entrails carefully washed. When the hole was
sufficiently heated, the fire was taken out, and some of the stones,
being placed at the bottom, were covered with green leaves. The dog,
with the entrails, was then placed upon the leaves, and other leaves
being laid upon them, the whole was covered with the rest of the hot
stones, and the mouth of the hole close stopped with mould. In somewhat
less than four hours, it was again opened, and the dog taken out
excellently baked, and the party all agreed that he made a very good
dish. These dogs it seems are bred to be eaten, and live wholly on
bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, yams, and other vegetables of the like kind.

The food of the natives, being chiefly vegetable, consists of the
various preparations of the bread-fruit, of cocoa-nuts, bananas,
plantains, and a great variety of other fruit, the spontaneous products
of a rich soil and genial climate. The bread-fruit, when baked in the
same manner as the dog was, is rendered soft, and not unlike a boiled
potato; not quite so farinaceous as a good one, but more so than those
of the middling sort. Much of this fruit is gathered before it is ripe,
and by a certain process is made to undergo the two states of
fermentation, the saccharine and acetous, in the latter of which it is
moulded into balls, and called _Mahie_. The natives seldom make a meal
without this sour paste. Salt water is the universal sauce, without
which no meal is eaten. Their drink in general consists of water, or the
juice of the cocoa-nut; the art of producing liquors that intoxicate by
fermentation be