Such is their food, to which salt-water is the universal sauce, no meal being eaten without it:  Those who live near the sea have it fetched as it is wanted; those who live at some distance keep it in large bamboos, which are set up in their houses for use.  Salt-water, however, is not their only sauce; they make another of the kernels of cocoa-nuts, which being fermented till they dissolve into a paste somewhat resembling butter, are beaten up with salt-water.  The flavour of this is very strong, and was, when we first tasted it, exceedingly nauseous; a little use, however, reconciled some of our people to it so much, that they preferred it to our own sauces, especially with fish.  The natives seemed to consider it as a dainty, and do not use it at their common meals; possibly because they think it ill management to use cocoa-nuts so lavishly, or perhaps when we were at the island, they were scarcely ripe enough for the purpose.

For drink, they have in general nothing but water, or the juice of the cocoa-nut; the art of producing liquors that intoxicate, by fermentation, being happily unknown among them; neither have they any narcotic which they chew, as the natives of some other countries do opium, beetle-root, and tobacco.  Some of them drank freely of our liquors, and in a few instances became very drunk; but the persons to whom this happened were so far from desiring to repeat the debauch, that they would never touch any of our liquors afterwards.  We were, however, informed, that they became drunk by drinking a juice that is expressed from the leaves of a plant which they call ava ava.  This plant was not in season when we were there, so that we saw no instances of its effects; and as they considered drunkenness as a disgrace, they probably would have concealed from us any instances which might have happened during our stay.  This vice is almost peculiar to the chiefs, and considerable persons, who vie with each other in drinking the greatest number of draughts, each draught being about a pint.  They keep this intoxicating juice with great care from their women.[10]

[Footnote 10:  Turnbull speaks of intoxication being quite common and excessive at the feasts of the Otaheitans.  And the reader will often hear of the intemperate use and had effects of the ava or yava.  The love of this liquor, or its effects rather, must indeed be strong, to reconcile them to the disgusting manner in which it is prepared.  “Several women,” says the missionary account, “have each a portion given them to chew of the stem and root (of the yava shrub) together, which, when masticated, they spit into a bowl into which some of the leaves of the plant are finely broken; they add water, or cocoa-nut liquor:  The whole is then well stirred, and begins quickly to ferment; when it is strained or wrung out in the moo gross, or cocoa-nut fibres, and drank in cups of folded leaves.  It is highly intoxicating, and seems for a while to deprive them of the use of their limbs:  They lie