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- CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KINDNESS OF MARHEYO AND THE REST OF THE ISLANDERS--A FULL DESCRIPTION OF
THE BREAD-FRUIT TREE--DIFFERENT MODES OF PREPARING THE FRUIT
All the inhabitants of the valley treated me with great kindness; but as
to the household of Marheyo, with whom I was now permanently domiciled,
nothing could surpass their efforts to minister to my comfort. To the
gratification of my palate they paid the most unwearied attention.
They continually invited me to partake of food, and when after eating
heartily I declined the viands they continued to offer me, they seemed
to think that my appetite stood in need of some piquant stimulant to
excite its activity.
In pursuance of this idea, old Marheyo himself would hie him away to
the sea-shore by the break of day, for the purpose of collecting
various species of rare sea-weed; some of which among these people are
considered a great luxury. After a whole day spent in this employment,
he would return about nightfall with several cocoanut shells filled with
different descriptions of kelp. In preparing these for use he manifested
all the ostentation of a professed cook, although the chief mystery of
the affair appeared to consist in pouring water in judicious quantities
upon the slimy contents of his cocoanut shells.
The first time he submitted one of these saline salads to my critical
attention I naturally thought that anything collected at such pains must
possess peculiar merits; but one mouthful was a complete dose; and great
was the consternation of the old warrior at the rapidity with which I
ejected his Epicurean treat.
How true it is, that the rarity of any particular article enhances
its value amazingly. In some part of the valley--I know not where, but
probably in the neighbourhood of the sea--the girls were sometimes in
the habit of procuring small quantities of salt, a thimble-full or
so being the result of the united labours of a party of five or six
employed for the greater part of the day. This precious commodity they
brought to the house, enveloped in multitudinous folds of leaves; and
as a special mark of the esteem in which they held me, would spread
an immense leaf on the ground, and dropping one by one a few minute
particles of the salt upon it, invite me to taste them.
From the extravagant value placed upon the article, I verily believe,
that with a bushel of common Liverpool salt all the real estate in Typee
might have been purchased. With a small pinch of it in one hand, and a
quarter section of a bread-fruit in the other, the greatest chief in the
valley would have laughed at all luxuries of a Parisian table.
The celebrity of the bread-fruit tree, and the conspicuous place it
occupies in a Typee bill of fare, induces me to give at some length
a general description of the tree, and the various modes in which the
fruit is prepared.
The bread-fruit tree, in its glorious prime, is a grand and towering
object, forming the same feature in a Marquesan landscape that the
patriarchal elm does in New England scenery. The latter tree it not a
little resembles in height, in the wide spread of its stalwart branches,
and in its venerable and imposing aspect.
The leaves of the bread-fruit are of great size, and their edges are cut
and scolloped as fantastically as those of a lady’s lace collar. As they
annually tend towards decay, they almost rival in brilliant variety
of their gradually changing hues the fleeting shades of the expiring
dolphin. The autumnal tints of our American forests, glorious as they
are, sink into nothing in comparison with this tree.
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