Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/276

266 not a sound one. There is evidence that the Maoris knew the art of stone-boiling, though they used it but little. It is found among them under circumstances which give no ground for supposing that it was introduced after Captain Cook's visit. The curious dried human heads of New Zealand, which excel any mummies that have ever been made in the preservation of the features of the dead, were first brought over to England by Cook's party. From a careful description of the process of preparing them, made since, it appears that one thing was to parboil them (as we used to do traitors' heads for Temple Bar), and this was contrived by throwing them "into boiling water, into which red-hot stones are continually cast, to keep up the heat." A remark made by another writer places the existence of stone-boiling as a native New Zealand art beyond question. "The New Zealanders, although destitute of vessels in which to boil water, had an ingenious way of heating water to the boiling point, for the purpose of making shell-fish open. This was done by putting red-hot stones into wooden vessels full of water." When, therefore, we find them boiling and eating the berries of the Laurus tawa, which are harmless when boiled, but poisonous in their raw state, it is not necessary to suppose this to have been found out since Captain Cook's time, as the boiling was probably done before with hot stones.

In several other Polynesian islands, it appears from Cook's journals that stone-boiling was in ordinary use in cookery. The making of a native pudding in Tahiti is thus described. Breadfruit, ripe plantains, taro, and palm or pandanus nuts, were rasped, scraped, or beaten up fine, and baked separately. A quantity of juice, expressed from cocoa-nut kernels, was put into a large tray or wooden vessel. The other articles, hot from the oven, were deposited in this vessel, and a few hot stones were also put in to make the contents simmer. Few puddings in England, he says, equal these. In the island of Anamooka, they brought him a mess of fish, soup, and yams stewed in cocoa-nut liquor, "probably in a wooden vessel, with hot stones." The practice seems to have existed in the Marquesas, and in Huaheine