outhful 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.

The leaf, in one particular stage, when nearly all the prismatic colours
are blended on its surface, is often converted by the natives into
a superb and striking head-dress. The principal fibre traversing its
length being split open a convenient distance, and the elastic sides of
the aperture pressed apart, the head is inserted betwe