Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by American Museum of Natural History.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
brought with them several baskets of taro which, as
soon as Dr. Drowne had paid for them with a fathom
of calico or a few sticks of tobacco, they placed
on the stand.
Bakki was given ten pounds of flour and three tea
tinfuls of rice with which to compose pasty cakes. We
had already salted down the carcasses of a dozen or so
pigeons and these, with the addition of four tins of
beef (bullimicow) were persuaded to become a stew.
With thirty or forty baskets of taro laid out on the
stand and fragrant odors pouring from the cook-house,
the place assumed the full properties of a carnival.
It rained hard in the early part of the afternoon.
It looked as though Dr. Drowne's little party was going
to be a fizzle. But it wasn't. At four o'clock the
clouds cleared away and the guests got themselves ready
for the performance.
The pickanninies went into the bush and cut a
great many bamboo stalks. These stalks were in turn
cut down into pieces of five, from eight inches to a
foot long. Tied together with vines the five pieces
composed a flute and every man present made one and held
it in his hand. The Kukerai of Kupei cut branches and
leafy stalks and passed them around.
Then the sing sing began. Each man with a branch
of leaves, or bush axe, or a bow, or a spear held high
in the air in one hand with the flute pressed close to
the mouth by the other, to the tune of the Kanaka