- end_line
- 7115
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:25.203Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 7061
- text
- be given. The natives were hurrying about hither and thither, engaged in
various duties, some lugging off to the stream enormous hollow
bamboos, for the purpose of filling them with water; others chasing
furious-looking hogs through the bushes, in their endeavours to capture
them; and numbers employed in kneading great mountains of poee-poee
heaped up in huge wooden vessels.
After observing these lively indications for a while, I was attracted to
a neighbouring grove by a prodigious squeaking which I heard there. On
reaching the spot I found it proceeded from a large hog which a number
of natives were forcibly holding to the earth, while a muscular fellow,
armed with a bludgeon, was ineffectually aiming murderous blows at the
skull of the unfortunate porker. Again and again he missed his
writhing and struggling victim, but though puffing and panting with
his exertions, he still continued them; and after striking a sufficient
number of blows to have demolished an entire drove of oxen, with one
crashing stroke he laid him dead at his feet.
Without letting any blood from the body, it was immediately carried to a
fire which had been kindled near at hand and four savages taking hold of
the carcass by its legs, passed it rapidly to and fro in the flames.
In a moment the smell of burning bristles betrayed the object of this
procedure. Having got thus far in the matter, the body was removed to a
little distance and, being disembowelled, the entrails were laid aside
as choice parts, and the whole carcass thoroughly washed with water. An
ample thick green cloth, composed of the long thick leaves of a species
of palm-tree, ingeniously tacked together with little pins of bamboo,
was now spread upon the ground, in which the body being carefully
rolled, it was borne to an oven previously prepared to receive it. Here
it was at once laid upon the heated stones at the bottom, and covered
with thick layers of leaves, the whole being quickly hidden from sight
by a mound of earth raised over it.
Such is the summary style in which the Typees convert perverse-minded
and rebellious hogs into the most docile and amiable pork; a morsel
of which placed on the tongue melts like a soft smile from the lips of
Beauty.
I commend their peculiar mode of proceeding to the consideration of all
butchers, cooks, and housewives. The hapless porker whose fate I have
just rehearsed, was not the only one who suffered in that memorable day.
Many a dismal grunt, many an imploring squeak, proclaimed what was going
on throughout the whole extent of the valley; and I verily believe the
first-born of every litter perished before the setting of that fatal
sun.
The scene around the Ti was now most animated. Hogs and poee-poee were
baking in numerous ovens, which, heaped up with fresh earth into slight
elevations, looked like so many ant-hills. Scores of the savages were
vigorously plying their stone pestles in preparing masses of poee-poee,
and numbers were gathering green bread-fruit and young cocoanuts in the
surrounding groves; when an exceeding great multitude, with a view of
encouraging the rest in their labours, stood still, and kept shouting
most lustily without intermission.
- title
- Chunk 8