On our arrival, and as soon as the stones were heated for our meal,
several of the natives out of the neighbouring huts hastened to
profit by the opportunity to cook their provisions as well, bringing
with them fish, pieces of pork, bread-fruit, plantains, and so on.
The fish and meat were enveloped in large leaves. For our use,
besides bread-fruit and fish, there was a turtle weighing perhaps
more than twenty pounds. The repast was held in a hut, to which the
whole neighbourhood also came, and forming themselves into groups a
little on one side of us principal guests, eat the provisions they
had brought with them. Each person had a cocoa-nut shell full of
miti before him; into this he first threw every morsel and took it
out again with his hand, and then what remained of the miti was
drunk at the end of the meal. We had each of us a fresh cocoa-nut
with a hole bored in it, containing at least a pint of clear, sweet-
tasting water. This is erroneously termed by us "Milk," but it only
becomes thick and milky when the cocoa-nut is very stale, in which
condition it is never eaten in these islands.
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