THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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same is true as to time. They seemingly have no more care or thought of the morrow than birds, only they see to it that food for Sunday is procured on Saturday. They are averse to doing more, or other, work than their wants require, and this is but little. No one is overworked. They are kind to each other, and seem to be as happy in their work as in their sports, which is evinced by the unreserved habit of singing when performing any manual labor. They are much given to exchanging children, or adopting each other’s children, thinking in doing this that they strengthen their family ties. Observation leads me to believe that they are fond of their own children, but are seemingly as fond of otfiers that come to them by exchange.
The chief article of export is copra , which is the kernel of the cocoanut cut into small pieces and dried. Formerly this was dried in the sun, but now they use large ovens, though the natives still dry in the sun in small quantities, of course, as they have to protect it from the frequent rains of that country, and they bring this to the traders at Apia and exchange it for whatever they need.
You can hardly imagine the many uses the Samoans make of the cocoanut. Really, the cocoanut tree is the mainstay of Samoa, for it is used for food, implements, utensils, fans, baskets, combs, brooms, roofs, and innumerable purposes. They serve you kava, their native drink, in a cup made from the cocoanut, which is often highly polished by constant use. When the cocoanut is wanted to drink, it is plucked while the outer husk is green. The milk, which is like water, is clear, sparkling, slightly sweet, and very refreshing, the meat at that time being fit to eat only with a spoon. In native churches fresh cocoanut milk is used in place of wine at the communion service.
While these natives use the cocoanut in so many ways, they are very dependent upon taro and bananas for their chief food. Taro is their chief vegetable, its growth being similar to that of our beet. It comes to maturity in four months, and is planted continuously all the year. When the natives take up the taro , they cut off the top and put it back into the ground, and another root forms as though nothing had happened to it. They scrape the root and bake it in their ovens. A native oven is a hole in the ground lined with stones, in which a fire is built and loose stones placed. When a pig is to be roasted, these loose hot stones are placed inside the pig, which is then wrapped in banana leaves, and after the fire is cleared from the oven, the pig, taro , fowls, pigeons, etc., all wrapped in banana leaves, are put into the oven, the top is carefully covered with stones and more banana leaves, and the whole is left over night.
The soil on all these islands is exceedingly rich and is everywhere covered with dense vegetation, from the water’s edge to the mountain tops. The passai, or passion vine, grows there with great rapidity. Europeans train it over arbors, but it grows in the bush, climbing trees. The flower, with which we are all familiar in our greenhouses, is the purple passion flower, and the fruit we enjoy, only the center is eaten, which is a mass of yellow jelly-like seeds, and very delicate, and is called grenadilla. The Avoca pear is also very delicious, though it does not grow in abundance.
KAVA MAKING.
Kava is the national drink, and is manufactured from the root of a kind of pepper shrub that grows luxuriantly in many parts of these islands, both in native and cultivated state. It is used both green and dry, though generally dried, and the root has to be four or five years old to be good, and if it grows ten or fifteen years it is much better and larger and will weigh thirty pounds or so; when young, only four or five. It will keep for any length of time, and is bought and sold in all the stores of Apia, bringing from two to three English shillings a pound, dried. Kava is omnipresent and indispensable. Nothing is correctly done in Samoa without kava drinking. You enter a native house to call, and presently some native girls are summoned to make kava, for it is always made in your sight, is expected on all social occasions and is associated with every occupation. It follows working-parties in the bush. The fond-
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