uge wooden vessels.

After observing these lively indications for awhile, I was attracted to a
neighbouring grove by a prodigious squeaking which I heard there. On
reaching the spot I found it proceeded from a large hog which a number of
natives were forcibly holding to the earth, while a muscular fellow, armed
with a bludgeon, was ineffectually aiming murderous blows at the skull of
the unfortunate porker. Again and again he missed his writhing and
struggling victim, but though puffing and panting with his exertions, he
still continued them; and after striking a sufficient number of blows to
have demolished an entire drove of oxen, with one crashing stroke he laid
him dead at his feet.

Without letting any blood from the body, it was immediately carried to a
fire which had been kindled near at hand, and four savages taking hold of
the carcass by its legs, passed it rapidly to and fro in the flames. In a
moment the smell of burning bristles betrayed the object of this
procedure. Having got thus far in the matter, the body was removed to a
little distance; and, being disembowelled, the entrails were laid aside as
choice parts, and the whole carcass thoroughly washed with water. An ample
thick green cloth, composed of the long thick leaves of a species of palm
tree, ingeniously tacked together with little pins of bamboo, was now
spread upon the ground, in which the body being carefully rolled, it was
borne to an oven previously prepared to receive it. Here it was at once
laid upon the heated stones at the bottom, and covered with thick layers
of leaves, the whole being quickly hidden from sight by a mound of earth
raised over it.

Such is the summary style in which the Typees convert perverse-minded and
rebellious hogs into the most docile and amiable pork; a morsel of which
placed on the tongue melts like a soft smile from the lips of beauty.

I commend their peculiar mode of proceeding to the consideration of all
butchers, cooks, and housewives. The hapless porker whose fate I have just
rehearsed, was not the only one who suffered on that memorable day. Many a
dismal grunt, many an imploring squeak, proclaimed what was going on
throughout the whole extent of the valley: and I verily believe the
first-born of every litter perished before the setting of that fatal sun.

The scene around the Ti was now most animated. Hogs and poee-poee were
baking in numerous ovens, which, heaped up with fresh earth into slight
elevati