small bread-fruit, roasted
brown. An immense flat calabash, placed in the centre, was heaped up
with numberless small packages of moist, steaming leaves: in each was
a small fish, baked in the earth, and done to a turn. This pyramid of
a dish was flanked on either side by an ornamental calabash. One was
brimming with the golden-hued "poee," or pudding, made from the red
plantain of the mountains: the other was stacked up with cakes of the
Indian turnip, previously macerated in a mortar, kneaded with the
milk of the cocoa-nut, and then baked. In the spaces between the
three dishes were piled young cocoa-nuts, stripped of their husks.
Their eyes had been opened and enlarged; so that each was a
ready-charged goblet.

There was a sort of side-cloth in one corner, upon which, in bright,
buff jackets, lay the fattest of bananas; "avees," red-ripe: guavas
with the shadows of their crimson pulp flushing through a transparent
skin, and almost coming and going there like blushes; oranges,
tinged, here and there, berry-brown; and great, jolly melons, which
rolled about in very portliness. Such a heap! All ruddy, ripe, and
round--bursting with the good cheer of the tropical soil from which
they sprang!

"A land of orchards!" cried the doctor, in a rapture; and he snatched
a morsel from a sort of fruit of which gentlemen of the sanguine
temperament are remarkably fond; namely, the ripe cherry lips of Misa
Day-Born, who stood looking on.

Marharvai allotted seats to his guests; and the meal began. Thinking
that his hospitality needed some acknowledgment, I rose, and pledged
him in the vegetable wine of the cocoa-nut; merely repeating the
ordinary salutation, "Yar onor boyoee." Sensible that some
compliment, after the fashion of white men, was paid him, with a
smile, and a courteous flourish of the hand, he bade me be seated. No
people, however refined, are more easy and graceful in their manners
than the Imeeose.

The doctor, sitting next our host, now came under his special
protection. Laying before his guest one of the packages of fish,
Marharvai opened it; and commended its contents to his particular
regards. But my comrade was one of those who, on convivial occasions,
can always take care of themselves. He ate an indefinite number of
"Pee-hee Lee Lees" (small fish), his own and next neighbour's
bread-fruit; and helped himself, to right and left, with all the ease
of an accomplished diner-out.

"Paul," said he, at last, "