Page:Some Account of New Zealand.pdf/26

Rh tion by the natives; and previously to the introduction of potatoes, was almost their only esculent vegetable. They call it Haddawai, and the method of preparing it for food consists in beating it for some time with a stone, until it becomes soft; they then chew it, and after having extracted the glutinous substance with which it abounds, exclude the fibrous parts.

There are flowering shrubs and wild indigo in great abundance.

There is every appearance of a great scope for mineralogical investigation, though there is no reason to suppose that the natives are acquainted with the existence of metal of any kind in New Zealand, as I could not discover in their tools or ornaments any metal, but such as evidently had been procured from Europeans. There is a green semi-transparent talc, brought from the interior, of considerable hardness, with which they make their tools, and a number of ornaments. This had formerly been considered of great value; but in pro-