he rind from the fermented _mei_ with
cowry shells, and grated the fruit into the pit which they had lined
with banana leaves. From time to time they stood in the pit and
tramped down the mass of pulp, or thumped it with wooden clubs.

For two weeks or more the work continued. In the ancient days much
ceremoniousness attended this provision against future famine, but
to-day in Atuona only one rule was observed, that forbidding sexual
intercourse by those engaged in filling the pits.

"To break that _tapu_," said Great Fern, "would mean sickness and
disaster. Any one who ate such _popoi_ would vomit. The forbidden
food cannot be retained by the stomach."

To vomit during the fortnight occupied in the task of conserving the
breadfruit brought grave suspicion that the unfortunate had broken
the _tapu_. When their own savage laws governed them, that unhappy
person often died from fear of discovery and the wrath of the gods.
To guard against such a fate those who were not strong and well took
no part in the task.

This curious connection between sex and the preparation of food
applied in many other cases. A woman making oil from dried cocoanuts
was _tapu_ as to sexual relations for four or five days, and
believed that if did she sin, her labor would produce no oil. A man
cooking in an oven at night obeyed the same _tapu_. I do not know,
and was unable to discover, the origin of these prohibitions. Like
many of our own customs, it has been lost in the mist of ages.

A Tahitian legend of the origin of the breadfruit recounts that in
ancient times the people subsisted on _araea_, red earth. A couple
had a sickly son, their only child, who day by day slowly grew
weaker on the diet of earth, until the father begged the gods to
accept him as an offering and let him become food for the boy. From
the darkness of the temple the gods at last spoke to him, granting
his prayer. He returned to his wife and prepared for death,
instructing her to bury his head, heart and stomach at different
spots in the forest.

"When you shall hear in the night a sound like that of a leaf, then
of a flower, afterward of an unripe fruit, and then of a ripe, round
fruit falling on the ground, know that it is I who am become food
for our son," he said, and died.

She obeyed him, and on the second night she heard the sounds. In the
morning she and her son found a huge and wonderful tree where the
stomach had been buried. The Tahitians believe that t