The taro root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled.  When boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread.  The buck Kanakas bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment, and then it is poi—­and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tasteless before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward.  But nothing is more nutritious.  When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of the Kanakas.  I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as there is in eating with chopsticks.  The forefinger is thrust into the mess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out, thickly coated, just as it it were poulticed; the head is thrown back, the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and swallowed—­the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of ecstasy.  Many a different finger goes into the same bowl and many a different kind of dirt and shade and quality of flavor is added to the virtues of its contents.

Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awa root.  It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of the people in former times by certain imported diseases would have been far greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a fancy.  All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his vitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of diseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but all are not willing to allow to the awa the virtues claimed for it.  The natives manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in its effects when persistently indulged in.  It covers the body with dry, white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude.  Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a Government license of eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusive right to sell awa root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every twelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of retailing whiskey, etc., only make a bare living.

We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish, and eats the article raw and alive!  Let us change the subject.

In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed.  All the native population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the surrounding country journeyed to the city.  Then the white folks had to stay indoors, for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and cavalieresses that it was next to impossible to thread one’s way through the cavalcades without getting crippled.