CHAPTER XIV
Kindness of Marheyo and the rest of the islanders--A full description of the bread-fruit tree--Different modes of preparing the fruit.
All the inhabitants of the valley treated me with great kindness; but asto the household of Marheyo, with whom I was now permanently domiciled,nothing could surpass their efforts to minister to my comfort. To thegratification of my palate they paid the most unwearied attention. Theycontinually invited me to partake of food, and when after eating heartilyI declined the viands they continued to offer me, they seemed to thinkthat my appetite stood in need of some piquant stimulant to excite itsactivity.
In pursuance of this idea, old Marheyo himself would hie him away to thesea-shore by the break of day, for the purpose of collecting variousspecies of rare seaweed; some of which, among these people, are considereda great luxury. After a whole day spent in this employment, he wouldreturn about nightfall with several cocoa-nut shells filled with differentdescriptions of kelp. In preparing these for use, he manifested all theostentation of a professed cook, although the chief mystery of the affairappeared to consist in pouring water in judicious quantities upon theslimy contents of his cocoa-nut shells.
The first time he submitted one of these saline salads to my criticalattention, I naturally thought that anything collected at such pains mustpossess peculiar merits; but one mouthful was a complete dose; and greatwas the consternation of the old warrior at the rapidity with which Iejected his epicurean treat.
How true it is, that the rarity of any particular article enhances itsvalue amazingly. In some part of the valley--I know not where, but probablyin the neighbourhood of the sea--the girls were sometimes in the habit ofprocuring small quantities of salt, a thimble-full or so being the resultof the united labours of a party of five or six employed for the greaterpart of the day. This precious commodity they brought to the house,enveloped in multitudinous folds of leaves; and as a special mark of theesteem in which they held me, would spread an immense leaf on the ground,and dropping one by one a few minute particles of the salt upon it, inviteme to taste them.
From the extravagant value placed upon the article, I verily believe, thatwith a bushel of common Liverpool salt, all the real estate in Typee mighthave been purchased. With a small pinch of it in one hand, and a quartersection of a bread-fruit in the other, the greatest chief in the valleywould have laughed at all the luxuries of a Parisian table.
The celebrity of the bread-fruit tree, and the conspicuous place itoccupies in a Typee bill of fare, induces me to give at some length ageneral description of the tree, and the various modes in which the fruitis prepared.
The bread-fruit tree, in its glorious prime, is a grand and toweringobject, forming the same feature in a Marquesan landscape that thepatriarchal elm does in New England scenery. The latter tree it not alittle resembles in height, in the wide spread of its stalwart branches,and in its venerable and imposing aspect.
The leaves of the bread-fruit are of great size, and their edges are cutand scolloped as fantastically as those of a lady's lace collar. As theyannually tend towards decay, they almost rival, in the brilliant varietyof their gradually changing hues, the fleeting shades of the expiringdolphin. The autumnal tints of our American forests, glorious as they are,sink into nothing in comparison with this tree.
The leaf, in one particular stage, when nearly all the prismatic coloursare blended on its surface, is often converted by the natives into asuperb and striking head-dress. The principal fibre traversing its lengthbeing split open a convenient distance, and the elastic sides of theaperture pressed apart, the head is inserted between them, the leafdrooping on one side, with its forward half turned jauntily up on thebrows, and the remaining part spreading laterally behind the ears.
The fruit somewhat resembles in magnitude and general appearance one ofour citron melons of ordinary size; but, unlike the citron, it has nosectional lines drawn along the outside. Its surface is dotted all overwith little conical prominences, looking not unlike the knobs on anantiquated church door. The rind is perhaps an eighth of an inch inthickness; and denuded of this, at the time when it is in the greatestperfection, the fruit presents a beautiful globe of white pulp, the wholeof which may be eaten, with the exception of a slender core, which iseasily removed.
The bread-fruit, however, is never used, and is indeed altogether unfit tobe eaten, until submitted in one form or other to the action of fire.
The most simple manner in which this operation is performed, and, I think,the best, consists in placing any number of the freshly-plucked fruit,when in a particular state of greenness, among the embers of a fire, inthe same way that you would roast a potato. After a lapse of ten orfifteen minutes, the green rind embrowns and cracks, showing through thefissures in its sides the milk-white interior. As soon as it cools therind drops off, and you then have the soft round pulp in its purest andmost delicious state. Thus eaten, it has a mild and pleasing flavour.
Sometimes after having been roasted in the fire, the natives snatch itbriskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of the yieldingrind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture, which they call"bo-a-sho." I never could endure this compound, and indeed the preparationis not greatly in vogue among the more polite Typees.
There is one form, however, in which the fruit is occasionally served,that renders it a dish fit for a king. As soon as it is taken from thefire the exterior is removed, the core extracted, and the remaining partis placed in a sort of shallow stone mortar, and briskly worked with apestle of the same substance. While one person is performing thisoperation, another takes a ripe cocoa-nut, and breaking it in half, whichthey also do very cleverly, proceeds to grate the juicy meat into fineparticles. This is done by means of a piece of mother-of-pearl shell,lashed firmly to the extreme end of a heavy stick, with its straight sideaccurately notched like a saw. The stick is sometimes a grotesquely-formedlimb of a tree, with three or four branches twisting from its body like somany shapeless legs, and sustaining it two or three feet from the ground.
The native, first placing a calabash beneath the nose, as it were, of hiscurious-looking log-steed, for the purpose of receiving the gratedfragments as they fall, mounts astride of it as if it were a hobby-horse,and twirling the inside of one of his hemispheres of cocoa-nut around thesharp teeth of the mother-of-pearl shell, the pure white meat falls insnowy showers into the receptacle provided. Having obtained a quantitysufficient for his purpose, he places it in a bag made of the net-likefibrous substance attached to all cocoa-nut trees, and compressing it overthe bread-fruit, which being now sufficiently pounded, is put into awooden bowl--extracts a thick creamy milk. The delicious liquid soonbubbles round the fruit, and leaves it at last just peeping above itssurface.
This preparation is called "kokoo," and a most lucious preparation it is.The hobby-horse and the pestle and mortar were in great requisition duringthe time I remained in the house of Marheyo, and Kory-Kory had frequentoccasion to show his skill in their use.
But the great staple articles of food into which the bread-fruit isconverted by these natives are known respectively by the names of Amar andPoee-Poee.
At a certain season of the year, when the fruit of the hundred groves ofthe valley has reached its maturity, and hangs in golden spheres fromevery branch, the islanders assemble in harvest groups, and garner in theabundance which surrounds them. The trees are stripped of their noddingburdens, which, easily freed from the rind and core, are gathered togetherin capacious wooden vessels, where the pulpy fruit is soon worked by astone pestle, vigorously applied, into a blended mass of a doughyconsistency called by the natives "Tutao." This is then divided intoseparate parcels, which, after being made up into stout packages,enveloped in successive folds of leaves, and bound round with thongs ofbark, are stored away in large receptacles hollowed in the earth, fromwhence they are drawn as occasion may require.
In this condition th
e Tutao sometimes remains for years, and even isthought to improve by age. Before it is fit to be eaten, however, it hasto undergo an additional process. A primitive oven is scooped in theground, and its bottom being loosely covered with stones, a large fire iskindled within it. As soon as the requisite degree of heat is attained,the embers are removed, and the surface of the stones being covered withthick layers of leaves, one of the large packages of Tutao is depositedupon them, and overspread with another layer of leaves. The whole is thenquickly heaped up with earth, and forms a sloping mound.
The Tutao thus baked is called "Amar"; the action of the oven havingconverted it into an amber-coloured caky substance, a little tart, but notat all disagreeable to the taste.
By another and final process the "Amar" is changed into "Poee-Poee." Thistransition is rapidly effected. The amar is placed in a vessel, and mixedwith water until it gains a proper pudding-like consistency, when, withoutfurther preparation, it is in readiness for use. This is the form in whichthe "Tutao" is generally consumed. The singular mode of eating it I havealready described.
Were it not that the bread-fruit is thus capable of being preserved for alength of time, the natives might be reduced to a state of starvation;for, owing to some unknown cause, the trees sometimes fail to bear fruit;and on such occasions the islanders chiefly depend upon the supplies theyhave been enabled to store away.
This stately tree, which is rarely met with upon the Sandwich Islands, andthen only of a very inferior quality, and at Tahiti does not abound to adegree that renders its fruit the principal article of food, attains itsgreatest excellence in the genial climate of the Marquesan group, where itgrows to an enormous magnitude, and flourishes in the utmost abundance.