ned the pit each morning and took out
enough for the day's provision, replacing the stones on the banana
leaves afterward. The intrusion of insects and lizards was not
considered to injure the flavor.

I often sat on her _paepae_ and watched her prepare the day's dinner.
Putting the rancid mass of _ma_ into a long wooden trough hollowed
out from a tree-trunk, she added water and mixed it into a paste of
the consistency of custard. This paste she wrapped in _purua_ leaves
and set to bake in a native oven of rocks that stood near the pit.

Apporo smoked cigarettes while it baked, perhaps to measure the time.
Marquesans mark off the minutes by cigarettes, saying, "I will do
so-and-so in three cigarettes," or, "It is two cigarettes from my
house to his."

When the cigarettes were consumed, or when her housewifely instinct
told Apporo that the dish was properly cooked, back it went into the
trough again, and was mashed with the _keatukipopoi_, the Phallic
pounder of stone known to all primitive peoples. A _pahake_, or
wooden bowl about eighteen inches in diameter, received it next, and
the last step of the process followed.

Taking a fistful of the mass, Apporo placed it in another _pahake_,
and kneaded it for a long time with her fingers, using oil from
crushed cocoanuts as a lubricant. And at last, proudly smiling, she
set before me a dish of _popoi kaoi_, the very best _popoi_ that can
possibly be made.

It is a dish to set before a sorcerer. I would as lief eat
bill-poster's paste a year old. It tastes like a sour, acid custard.
Yet white men learn to eat it, even to yearn for it. Captain Capriata,
of the schooner _Roberta_, which occasionally made port in Atuona Bay,
could digest little else. Give him a bowl of _popoi_ and a stewed or
roasted cat, and his Corsican heart warmed to the giver.

As bread or meat are to us, so was _popoi_ to my tawny friends. They
ate it every day, sometimes three or four times a day, and consumed
enormous quantities at a squatting. As the peasant of certain
districts of Europe depends on black bread and cheese, the poor
Irish on potatoes or stirabout, the Scotch on oatmeal, so the
Marquesan satisfies himself with _popoi_, and likes it really better
than anything else.

Many times, when unable to evade the hospitality of my neighbors, I
squatted with them about the brimming _pahake_ set on their _paepae_,
and dipped a finger with them, though they marveled at my lack of
appetite. I