The roots are eaten raw or roasted in the fire; in either case they are, most of them, very good.  Some have the taste of a mild onion, and others have almost the taste and appearance of a small English potato, but of these only a single root is attached to each plant:  the mene has rather an acid taste and when eaten alone is said, by the natives, to cause dysentery; they never use it in the southern districts without pounding it between two stones and sprinkling over it a few pinches of an earth which they consider extremely good and nutritious; they then pound the mould and root together into a paste, and swallow it as a bonne bouche, the noxious qualities of the plant being destroyed by the earth.

Many other roots are pounded between flat stones into a paste and are then made into a cake and baked.  The two roots which taste the best, when cooked in this way, are the jee-ta and yunjid.

The former of these resembles in appearance and taste the unripe seeds of Indian corn; it is in season in June and is really very palatable.  The latter is the root of a species of flag, and consists of a case enclosing a multitude of tender filaments, with nodules of farinaceous matter adhering to them.  These are collected into a mass by pounding the root, and the cake formed from the paste is very nice.  The natives must be admitted to bestow a sort of cultivation upon this root, as they frequently burn the leaves of the plant in the dry seasons in order to improve it.

EDIBLE FUNGI AND GUMS.

The different kinds of fungus are very good.  In certain seasons of the year they are abundant and the natives eat them greedily.

Kwon-nat is the kind of gum which most abounds and is considered the nicest article of food.  It is a species of gum-tragacynth.  In the summer months the acacias growing in swampy plains are literally loaded with this gum, and the natives assemble in numbers to partake of this favourite esculent.  As but few places afford a sufficient supply of food to support a large assemblage of persons these Kwon-nat grounds are generally the spots at which their annual barter meetings are held, and during these fun, frolic, and quarrelling of every description prevail.

POISONOUS NUTS.

No article of food used by the natives is more deserving of notice than the by-yu.  This name is applied to the pulp of the nut of a species of palm which, in its natural state, acts as a most violent emetic and cathartic; the natives themselves consider it as a rank poison:  they however are acquainted with a very artificial method of preparing it, by which it is completely deprived of its noxious qualities and then becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of food.  Europeans who are not acquainted with this mode of preparing the nut, the stones of which they find lying about the fireplaces of the natives, are frequently tempted to eat it in its natural state, but they invariably pay a severe penalty for the mistake.  The following extract, from Captain Cook’s * first voyage, gives one instance of this: