bread-fruit and yams are rather to be esteemed rarities.  Of animal food they can be in no want; as they have abundance of hogs, which run without restraint about the houses; and if they eat dogs, which is not improbable, their stock of these seemed to be very considerable.  The great number of fishing-hooks found amongst them, shewed that they derive no inconsiderable supply of animal food from the sea.  But it should seem, from their practice of salting fish, that the openness of their coast often interrupts the business of catching them; as it may be naturally supposed, that no set of people would ever think of preserving quantities of food artificially, if they could depend upon a daily regular supply of it in its fresh state.  This sort of reasoning, however, will not account for their custom of salting their pork, as well as their fish, which are preserved in gourd-shells.  The salt, of which they use a great quantity for this purpose, is of a red colour, not very coarse, and seems to be much the same with what our stragglers found at Christmas Island.  It has its colour doubtless from a mixture of the mud at the bottom of the part where it is formed; for some of it that had adhered in lumps, was of a sufficient whiteness and purity.

They bake their vegetable food with heated stones, as at the southern islands; and from the vast quantity, which we saw dressed at one time, we suspected that the whole village, or, at least, a considerable number of people joined in the use of a common oven.  We did not see them dress any animal food at this island; but Mr Gore’s party, as already mentioned, had an opportunity of satisfying themselves, that it was dressed at Oneeheow in the same sort of ovens, which leaves no doubt of this being also the practice in Atooi; especially as we met with no utensil there that could be applied to the purpose of stewing or boiling.  The only artificial dish we met with was a taro pudding, which, though a disagreeable mess from its sourness, was greedily devoured by the natives.  They eat off a kind of wooden plates or trenchers; and the women, as far as we could judge from one instance, if restrained from feeding at the same dish with the men, as at Otaheite, are at least permitted to eat in the same place near them.

Their amusements seem pretty various; for during our short stay, several were discovered.  The dances at which they used the feathered-cloaks and caps were not seen; but from the motions which they made with their hands on other occasions, when they sung, we could form some judgment that they are, in some degree at least, similar to those we had met with at the southern islands, though not executed so skilfully.  Neither had they amongst them either flutes or reeds, and the only two musical instruments which we observed were of an exceedingly rude kind.  One of them does not produce a melody exceeding that of a child’s rattle.  It consists of what may be called a conic cap inverted, but scarcely hollowed at the base above