tes establish
themselves in his dominions, but that he esteemed only people with some
useful trade, and despised idlers, and especially drunkards. We saw at
Wahoo about thirty of these white inhabitants, for the most part, people
of no character, and who had remained on the islands either from
indolence, or from drunkenness and licentiousness. Some had taken wives
in the country, in which case the king gave them a portion of land to
cultivate for themselves. But two of the worst sort had found means to
procure a small still, wherewith they manufactured rum and supplied it
to the natives.

The first navigators found only four sorts of quadrupeds on the Sandwich
islands:--dogs, swine, lizards, and rats. Since then sheep have been
carried there, goats, horned cattle, and even horses, and these animals
have multiplied.

The chief vegetable productions of these isles are the sugar cane, the
bread-fruit tree, the banana, the water-melon, the musk-melon, the
_taro_, the _ava_, the _pandanus_, the mulberry, &c. The bread-fruit
tree is about the size of a large apple-tree; the fruit resembles an
apple and is about twelve or fourteen inches in circumference; the rind
is thick and rough like a melon: when cut transversely it is found to
be full of sacs, like the inside of an orange; the pulp has the
consistence of water-melon, and is cooked before it is eaten. We saw
orchards of bread-fruit trees and bananas, and fields of sugar-cane,
back of Ohetity.

The _taro_ grows in low situations, and demands a great deal of care. It
is not unlike a white turnip,[E] and as it constitutes the principal
food of the natives, it is not to be wondered at that they bestow so
much attention on its culture. Wherever a spring of pure water is found
issuing out of the side of a hill, the gardener marks out on the
declivity the size of the field he intends to plant. The ground is
levelled and surrounded with a mud or stone wall, not exceeding eighteen
inches in height, and having a flood gate above and below. Into this
enclosure the water of the spring is conducted, or is suffered to escape
from it, according to the dryness of the season. When the root has
acquired a sufficient size it is pulled up for immediate use. This
esculent is very bad to eat raw, but boiled it is better than the yam.
Cut in slices, dried, pounded and reduced to a farina, it forms with
bread fruit the principal food of the natives. Sometimes they boil it to
the consistence