Custom has, I suppose, made this agreeable to their palates, though we disliked it extremely; we seldom saw them make a meal without some of it in some shape or form.
As the whole making of this mahie, as they call it, depends upon fermentation, I suppose it does not always succeed; it is always done by the old women, who make a kind of superstitious mystery of it, no one except the people employed by them being allowed to come even into that part of the house where it is. I myself spoiled a large heap of it only by inadvertently touching some leaves that lay upon it as I walked by the outside of the house where it was; the old directress of it told me that from that circumstance it would most certainly fail, and immediately pulled it down before my face, who did less regret the mischief I had done, as it gave me an opportunity of seeing the preparation, which, perhaps, I should not otherwise have been allowed to do.
To this plain diet, prepared with so much simplicity, salt water is the universal sauce; those who live at the greatest distance from the sea are never without it, keeping it in large bamboos set up against the sides of their houses. When they eat, a cocoanut-shell full of it always stands near them, into which they dip every morsel, especially of fish, and often leave the whole soaking in it, drinking at intervals large sups of it out of their hands, so that a man may use half a pint of it at a meal. They have also a sauce made of the kernels of cocoanuts fermented until they dissolve into a buttery paste, and beaten up with salt water; the taste of this is very strong, and at first was to me most abominably nauseous. A very little use, however, reconciled me to it, so much so that I should almost prefer it to our own sauces with fish. It is not common among them, possibly it is thought ill-management among them to use cocoanuts so lavishly, or we were on the islands at a time when they were scarcely ripe enough for this purpose.
Small fish they often eat raw, and sometimes large ones. I myself, by being constantly with them, learnt to do the same, insomuch that I have often made meals of raw fish
