the fish out of the leaves, and breaks one of them into the salt water, placing the other, and what remains of the bread-fruit, upon the leaves that have been spread before him.  When this is done, he takes up a small piece of the fish that has been broken into the salt water, with all the fingers of one hand, and sucks it into his mouth, so as to get with it as much of the salt water as possible:  In the same manner he takes the rest by different morsels, and between each, at least very frequently, takes a small sup of the salt water, either out of the cocoa-nut shell or the palm of his hand:  In the mean time one of his attendants has prepared a young cocoa-nut, by peeling off the outer rind with his teeth, an operation which to an European appears very surprising; but it depends so much upon sleight, that many or us were able to do it before we left the island, and some that could scarcely crack a filbert:  The master, when he chuses to drink, takes the cocoa-nut thus prepared, and boring a hole through the shell with his finger, or breaking it with a stone, he sucks out the liquor.  When he has eaten his bread-fruit and fish, he begins with his plantains, one of which makes but a mouthful, though it be as big as a black-pudding; if instead of plantains he has apples, he never tastes them till they have been pared; to do this a shell is picked up from the ground, where they are always in plenty, and tossed to him by an attendant:  He immediately begins to cut or scrape off the rind, but so awkwardly that great part of the fruit is wasted.  If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have some succedaneum for a knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he makes the necessary implement by splitting it transversely with his nail.  While all this has been doing, some of his attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone-pestle upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and sprinkled from time to time with water, it is reduced to the consistence of a soft paste, and is then put into a vessel somewhat like a butcher’s tray, and either made up alone, or mixed with banana or mahie, according to the taste of the master, by pouring water upon it by degrees and squeezing it often through the hand:  Under this operation it acquires the consistence of a thick custard, and a large cocoa-nut shell full of it being set before him, he sips it as we should do a jelly if we had no spoon to take it from the glass:  The meal is then finished by again washing his hands and his mouth.  After which the cocoa-nut shells are cleaned, and every thing that is left is replaced in the basket.

The quantity of food which these people eat at a meal is prodigious:  I have seen one man devour two or three fishes as big as a perch; three bread-fruits, each bigger than two fists; fourteen or fifteen plantains or bananas, each of them six or seven inches long, and four or five round; and near a quart of the pounded bread-fruit, which is as substantial as the thickest unbaked custard.  This is so extraordinary that I scarcely expect to be believed; and I would not have related it upon my own single testimony, but Mr Banks, Dr Solander, and most of the other gentlemen, have had ocular demonstration of its truth, and know that I mention them upon the occasion.