University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XV.

All the inhabitants of the valley treated me with great kindness;
but as to the household of Marheyo, with whom I was now
permanently domiciled, nothing could surpass their efforts to
minister to my comfort. To the gratification of my palate they
paid the most unwearied attention. They continually invited
me to partake of food, and when after eating heartily I declined
the viands they continued to offer me, they seemed to think that
my appetite stood in need of some piquant stimulant to excite its
activity.

In pursuance of this idea, old Marheyo himself would hie him
away to the sea-shore by the break of day, for the purpose of
collecting various species of rare sea-weed; some of which
among these people are considered a great luxury. After a
whole day spent in this employment, he would return about
nightfall with several cocoa-nut shells filled with different descriptions
of kemp. In preparing these for use he manifested all
the ostentation of a professed cook, although the chief mystery
of the affair appeared to consist in pouring water in judicious
quantities upon the slimy contents of his cocoa-nut shells.

The first time he submitted one of these saline salads to my
critical attention I naturally thought that anything collected at
such pains must possess peculiar merits; but one mouthful was a
complete dose; and great was the consternation of the old warrior
at the rapidity with which I ejected his Epicurean treat.

How true it is, that the rarity of any particular article enhances
its value amazingly. In some part of the valley—I know
not where, but probably in the neighbourhood of the sea—the
girls were sometimes in the habit of procuring small quantities of
salt, a thimble-full or so being the result of the united labours

of a party of five or six employed for the greater part of the
day. This precious commodity they brought to the house, enveloped
in multitudinous folds of leaves; and as a special mark
of the esteem in which they held me, would spread an immense
leaf on the ground, and dropping one by one a few minute particles
of the salt upon it, invite me to taste them.

From the extravagant value placed upon the article, I verily
believe, that with a bushel of common Liverpool salt all the real
estate in Typee might have been purchased. With a small pinch
of it in one hand, and a quarter section of a bread-fruit in the
other, the greatest chief in the valley would have laughed at all
the luxuries of a Parisian table.

The celebrity of the bread-fruit tree, and the conspicuous place
it occupies in a Typee bill of fare, induces me to give at some
length a general description of the tree, and the various modes in
which the fruit is prepared.

The bread-fruit tree, in its glorious prime, is a grand and
towering object, forming the same feature in a Marquesan landscape
that the patriarchal elm does in New England scenery.
The latter tree it not a little resembles in height, in the wide
spread of its stalwart branches, and in its venerable and imposing
aspect.

The leaves of the bread-fruit are of great size, and their edges
are cut and scolloped as fantastically as those of a lady's lace
collar. As they annually tend towards decay, they almost rival in
the brilliant variety of their gradually changing hues the fleeting
shades of the expiring dolphin. The autumnal tints of our
American forests, glorious as they are, sink into nothing in comparison
with this tree.

The leaf, in one particular stage, when nearly all the prismatic
colours are blended on its surface, is often converted by the
natives into a superb and striking head-dress. The principal
fibre traversing its length being split open a convenient distance,
and the elastic sides of the aperture pressed apart, the head is
inserted between them, the leaf drooping on one side, with its
forward half turned jauntily up on the brows, and the remaining
part spreading laterally behind the ears.

The fruit somewhat resembles in magnitude and general appearance
one of our citron melons of ordinary size; but, unlike

the citron, it has no sectional lines drawn along the outside. Its
surface is dotted all over with little conical prominences, looking
not unlike the knobs on an antiquated church door. The rind
is perhaps an eighth of an inch in thickness; and denuded of this,
at the time when it is in the greatest perfection, the fruit presents
a beautiful globe of white pulp, the whole of which may be
eaten, with the exception of a slender core, which is easily
removed.

The bread-fruit, however, is never used, and is indeed altogether
unfit to be eaten, until submitted in one form or other to
the action of fire.

The most simple manner in which this operation is performed,
and I think, the best, consists in placing any number of the freshly
plucked fruit, when in a particular stage of greenness, among the
embers of a fire, in the same way that you would roast a potato.
After the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, the green rind embrowns
and cracks, showing through the fissures in its sides the milk-white
interior. As soon as it cools, the rind drops off, and you
then have the soft round pulp in its purest and most delicious
state. Thus eaten, it has a mild and pleasing flavour.

Sometimes, after having been roasted in the fire, the natives
snatch it briskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of
the yielding rind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture,
which they call "bo-a-sho." I never could endure this compound,
and indeed the preparation is not greatly in vogue among
the more polite Typees.

There is one form, however, in which the fruit is occasionally
served, that renders it a dish fit for a king. As soon as it is taken
from the fire the exterior is removed, the core extracted, and the
remaining part is placed in a sort of shallow stone mortar, and
briskly worked with a pestle of the same substance. While one
person is performing this operation, another takes a ripe cocoanut,
and breaking it in half, which they also do very cleverly,
proceeds to grate the juicy meat into fine particles. This is
done by means of a piece of mother-of-pearl shell, lashed firmly
to the extreme end of a heavy stick, with its straight side
accurately notched like a saw. The stick is sometimes a grotesquely-formed
limb of a tree, with three or four branches
twisting from its body like so many shapeless legs, and sustaining
it two or three feet from the ground.

The native, first placing a calabash beneath the nose, as it
were, of his curious-looking log-steed, for the purpose of receiving
the grated fragments as they fall, mounts astride of it as
if it were a hobby-horse, and twirling the inside of one of his
hemispheres of cocoa-nut around the sharp teeth of the mother-of-pearl
shell, the pure white meat falls in snowy showers into
the receptacle provided. Having obtained a quantity sufficient
for his purpose, he places it in a bag made of the net-like fibrous
substance attached to all cocoa-nut trees, and compressing it
over the bread-fruit, which being now sufficiently pounded, is put
into a wooden bowl—extracts a thick creamy milk. The delicious
liquid soon bubbles round the fruit, and leaves it at last just
peeping above its surface.

This preparation is called "kokoo," and a most luscious preparation
it is. The hobby-horse and the pestle and mortar were
in great requisition during the time I remained in the house of
Marheyo, and Kory-Kory had frequent occasion to show his skill
in their use.

But the great staple articles of food into which the bread-fruit
is converted by these natives are known respectively by the
names of Amar and Poee-Poee.

At certain seasons of the year, when the fruit of the hundred
groves of the valley has reached its maturity, and hangs in
golden spheres from every branch, the islanders assemble in
harvest groups, and garner in the abundance which surrounds
them. The trees are stripped of their nodding burdens, which,
easily freed from the rind and core, are gathered together in
capacious wooden vessels, where the pulpy fruit is soon worked
by a stone pestle, vigorously applied, into a blended mass of a
doughy consistency, called by the natives "Tutao." This is
then divided into separate parcels, which, after being made up
into stout packages, enveloped in successive folds of leaves, and
bound round with thongs of bark, are stored away in large receptacles
hollowed in the earth, from whence they are drawn as
occasion may require.

In this condition the Tutao sometimes remains for years, and
even is thought to improve by age. Before it is fit to be eaten,
however, it has to undergo an additional process. A primitive
oven is scooped in the ground, and its bottom being loosely

covered with stones, a large fire is kindled within it. As soon
as the requisite degree of heat is attained, the embers are removed,
and the surface of the stones being covered with thick
layers of leaves, one of the larger packages of Tutao is deposited
upon them, and overspread with another layer of leaves. The
whole is then quickly heaped up with earth, and forms a sloping
mound.

The Tutao thus baked is called "Amar;" the action of the
oven having converted it into an amber-coloured caky substance,
a little tart, but not at all disagreeable to the taste.

By another and final process the "Amar" is changed into
"Poee-Poee." This transition is rapidly effected. The amar
is placed in a vessel, and mixed with water until it gains a proper
pudding-like consistency, when, without further preparation, it is
in readiness for use. This is the form in which the "Tutao" is
generally consumed. The singular mode of eating it I have
already described.

Were it not that the bread-fruit is thus capable of being preserved
for a length of time, the natives might be reduced to a
state of starvation; for owing to some unknown cause the trees
sometimes fail to bear fruit; and on such occasions the islanders
chiefly depend upon the supplies they have been enabled to store
away.

This stately tree, which is rarely met with upon the Sandwich
Islands, and then only of a very inferior quality, and at Tahiti
does not abound to a degree that renders its fruit the principal
article of food, attains its greatest excellence in the genial
climate of the Marquesan group, where it grows to an enormous
magnitude, and flourishes in the utmost abundance.