Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/361

Rh THE TONGA ISLANDS. cocoa-nut trees in abundance ; the soil is also liighly favourable for the cultivation of yams, which grow there larger than in most other places. The water which terminates it at one end is noted for the vast abundance of a pecu- liar fish which resort to the shores of Vavaoo about the month of July. This fish they call Ooloo Caoo, and is about the size of the com- mon sprat, and of much the same shape and hue. The common people consider it a great delicacy, but there is considerable danger of being poisoned by eating them promiscuously, for here and there is found one which, on eat- ing, produces the most alarming and sometimes the most fatal effects * ; and as there is no mark by which these poisonous ones may be known, it is always dangerous to eat of them, unless they be procured in the rocky bay of this plant- ation, where, they say, they never found any poisonous, and therefore partake of them without any reserve: the chiefs however seldom touch, them, unless perhaps there is a scarcity of other fish. The time when they are best and in the greatest plenty is in the latter end of the • The symptoms produced are headach, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea, with violent pains in the bowels, to which death generally succeeds in the course of four or five hours. The only remedy they use (which very seldom succeeds) is to cause the patient to drink abundantly of water, or, what Is considered still better, the milk of young cocoa-nuts.