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[Page 413]

Manners & Customs of the South Sea Islands

To this plain diet prepard with so much simplicity salt water is the universal sauce those who live at the greatest distance from the sea are never without it keeping it in large bamboes set up against the sides of their houses when they eat a cocoa nut shell full of it always stands near them into which they dip every morsel especialy of fish & often leave the whole soaking in it drinking at intervals large supps of it out of their hands so that a man may use ½ a pint of it at a meal They have also a sauce made of the Kernels of cocoa nutts fermented till they dissolve into a buttery paste & beat up with salt water the taste of this is very strong & at first was to me most abominably nauseous a very little use however reconcild me intirely to it so much that I should almost preferr it to our own sauces with fish it is not common among them possibly it is thought ill management among them to use cocoa nuts so lavisly or we were on the Islands at the time when they were scarce ripe enough for this purpose

Small fish they often eat raw & sometimes large ones I myself by being much with them learnt to do the same insomuch that I have made meals often of raw fish & bread fruit

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