Page:Castaway on the Auckland Isles (IA castawayonauckla01musg).pdf/47

Rh pledge my mother on this day in a bottle of good old port—but unfortunately it is out of my power to do so to-day; but I have not omitted to pledge her for all that. I have done so in a glass of beer of our own making, and what we use as a substitute for tea. It is not very good, but still it is preferable to cold water. It is made from the root which now forms a very material part of our food, and, as I have before stated, contains a considerable quantity of sugar. To make the beer we grate the root on a large grater (as we do for eating), boil it, let it ferment, and then put it in a cask and draw off as we use it. In using the root for food we fry it in oil (seal oil). It eats something like sawdust, but we are very thankful that we have it, otherwise we should have to live entirely on seals' meat, fowl, and fish, as our little stock of provisions which we had when we were wrecked has long since been exhausted. Nothing remains of it but a few crumbs of biscuit, which are regularly placed on the table, but only to look at—or 'point at,' as Paddy would say—for no one touches it.

We find that we can catch fish in great abundance, but we have only very recently found out the secret of catching them, which is done by fishing amongst the rocks with a short line tied to the end of a stick. The best time for catching them is the first quarter flood. One man can go out, and in an hour will return with sufficient fish to last us three days, and we eat them at every meal; and since we find that we can get them so easily, we eat very little seal meat; and the root, which we call sacchrie (from its saccharine property), eats better with fish than anything else.

Our parrots, which we have now had for some time, are getting on very well, and are beginning to talk; but, unfortunately, yesterday they all got out of the cage, and we have lost one of them—two remain.

Since I last wrote the weather has been very boisterous, and a good deal of snow has fallen. Yesterday everything was quite white, and it lay quite thick on the mountains;