Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/371

1770 great abundance of the shells of a kind of fruit resembling a pine-apple, though its taste was disagreeable enough. It is common to all the East Indies, and called by the Dutch Pyn appel Boomen (Pandanus). We found also the fruits of a low palm called by the Dutch Moeskruidige Callapus (Cycas circinalis), which they certainly eat, though this fruit is so unwholesome that some of our people, who, though forewarned, followed their example and ate one or two of them, were violently affected by them; and our hogs, whose constitutions we thought might be as strong as those of the Indians, literally died after having eaten them. It is probable, however, that these people have some method of preparing them by which their poisonous quality is destroyed, as the inhabitants of the East Indian Isles are said to do by boiling them, steeping them twenty-four hours in water, then drying them, and using them to thicken broth, from whence it would seem that the poisonous quality lies entirely in the juices, as it does in the roots of the mandihoca or cassada of the West Indies, and that when thoroughly cleared of them, the pulp remaining may be a wholesome and nutritious food.

Their victuals they generally dress by broiling or toasting them upon the coals, so we judged by the remains we saw; they understood, however, the method of baking or stewing with hot stones, and sometimes practised it, as we now and then saw the pits and burned stones which had been used for that purpose.

We observed that some, though but few, held constantly in their mouths the leaves of a herb which they chewed as a European does tobacco, or an East Indian betel; what sort of a plant it was we had no opportunity of learning, as we never saw anything but the chaws, which they took from their mouth to show us. It might be of the betel kind, and so far as we could judge from the fragments was so; but whatever it was, it was used without any addition, and seemed to have no kind of effect upon either the teeth or lips of those who used it.