(2.) Poi is a paste made of the tuberous root of the kalo (Colocasia antiquorum, var. esculenta, Schott.).  More than thirty varieties of kalo are cultivated on the Hawaiian Islands, most of them requiring a marshy soil, but a few will grow in the dry earth of the mountains.  The tubers of all the kinds are acrid, except one, which is so mild that it may be eaten raw.  After it is freed from acridity by baking, the kalo is pounded until reduced to a kind of paste which is eaten cold, under the name of poi.  It is the principal food of the natives, with whom it takes the place of bread.  The kalo leaves are eaten like spinach (luau), and the flowers (spathe and spadix), cooked in the leaves of the cordyline (C. terminalis, H.B.K.), form a most delicious dish.  It is not only as poi that the tubers are eaten; they are sliced and fried like potatoes, or baked whole upon hot stones.  It is in this last form that I have eaten them in my expeditions.  A tuber which I carried in my pocket has often been my only provision for the day.

In Algeria, a kind of kalo is cultivated under the name of chou caraibe, whose tubers are larger, but less feculent. [In China, smaller and much less delicately flavored tubers are common in the markets.]

(3.) The Hawaiians have always been epicures in the article of dog-meat.  The kind they raise for their feasts is small and easily fatted, like pig.  They are fed only on vegetables, especially kalo, to make their flesh more tender and delicately flavored.  Sometimes these dogs are suckled by the women at the expense of their infants.  The ones that have been thus fed at a woman’s breast are called ilio poli, and are most esteemed.

(4.) The Kahualii are still genuine parasites in the Hawaiian nation.  They are, to use the language of a Catholic missionary, the Cretans of whom Paul speaks:  “Evil beasts, slow bellies;” a race wholly in subjection to their appetite, living from day to day, always reclining on the mat, or else riding horses furiously; having no more serious occupation than to drink, eat, sleep, dance, tell stories; giving themselves up, in a word, to all pleasures, lawful and unlawful, without scruple or distinction of persons.  The Kahualii are very lazy.  They are ashamed of honest labor, thinking they would thus detract from their rank as chiefs.  Islanders of this caste are almost never seen in the service of Europeans.  When their patron, the high chief of the family, has made them feel the weight of his displeasure, these inferior chiefs become notoriously miserable, worse than the lowest of the Kanakas (generic name of the natives).

(5.) [Kamehameha IV. and V. were only noble through their mother, Kinau, the wife of Kekuanaoa.  They were adopted by Kamehameha III.  (Kauikeaouli).]

(6.) The old historian Namiki, an intelligent man, and well versed in the secrets of Hawaiian antiquity, has left precious unedited documents, which have fallen into our hands.  His son, Kuikauai, a school-master at Kailua, one of the true historico-sacerdotal race, has given us a genealogy of his ancestors which ascends without break to Paao.