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 being at this time happily unknown among them; neither did they make use of any narcotic, as the natives of some other countries do opium, beetel-nut, and tobacco.  One day the wife of one of the chiefs came running to Mr. Banks, who was always applied to in every emergency and distress, and with a mixture of grief and terror in her countenance, made him understand that her husband was dying, in consequence of something the strangers had given him to eat.  Mr. Banks found his friend leaning his head against a post, in an attitude of the utmost languor and despondency.  His attendants brought out a leaf folded up with great care, containing part of the poison of the effects of which their master was now dying.  On opening the leaf Mr. Banks found in it a chew of tobacco, which the chief had asked from some of the seamen, and imitating them, as he thought, he had rolled it about in his mouth, grinding it to powder with his teeth, and ultimately swallowing it.  During the examination of the leaf he looked up at Mr. Banks with the most piteous countenance, and intimated that he had but a very short time to live.  A copious draught of cocoa-nut milk, however, set all to rights, and the chief and his attendants were at once restored to that flow of cheerfulness and good-humour, which is the characteristic of these single-minded people.