Nineteenth-Century Travels, Explorations and Empires, Part II vol 6 by Peter J Kitson William Baker

Author:Peter J Kitson, William Baker [Peter J Kitson, William Baker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781000558982
Google: q7FQEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-12-16T02:48:41+00:00

I began to be quite resigned to my fate, and comparatively contented. When I rose in the morning I used to get my breakfast off a nice taro3 and some cold fish, and sometimes "palusami," which was the tender leaves of the taro, prepared with the rich milk of old cocoa-nuts and salt water. After breakfast I sometimes went out in the paddling canoes catching bonetta, at other times fishing inside the reefs in shoal water, by means of some hundreds of fathoms of bark covered with leaves and boughs, and then carried into the water and spread so as to form a fence, enclosing the fish in the middle of the circle; then they would contract the space in the middle by hauling on both ends of this floating fence, and still add to the strength and thiokness as they doubled and trebled it outside. When the space inside was getting so small that the fish were jumping over on every side, the sport began. Some with hand or scoop nets, seooping the fish out; others catching them as they jumped over the fence; others with grains pinning the largest down to the ground as they tried to penetrate a passage through the fence; some with spears, clubs, and stones, securing them in any manner they could; and others filling the girls' baskets, who were engaged in carrying the fish off to the houses. After dinner, which was generally about two in the afternoon, I would stroll out to some house where they were drinking ava, and after taking three or four cups full, have a smoke, and then an afternoon nap. As soon as I awoke it would probably be supper time, and after having had that, which was generally cold, the "siva" (dance) would begin; and whatever part of the village the evening closed with me, there I took up my lodgings.

2 Arum esculentum.

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