When, about this time, the _John Knox_ came to anchor in the bay, a Native was caught in the act of stealing from her. Angry at being discovered, he and his friends came to shoot me, pretending that it was because the _John Knox_ knew they were in want of food and had not brought them a load of Taro from Aneityum. Taro is a plant of the genus _Arum_, the _Æsculentum_, or _Colocasia Æsculenta_, well known all through Polynesia. The Natives spread it in a very simple way. Cutting off the leaves, with a very little of the old bulb still attached, they fix these in the ground, and have the new Taro about a year after that. It is of several kinds and of a great variety of colours—white, yellow, blue, etc. It grows best in ground irrigated by streams of pure water, or in shallow, swampy ground, over which the water runs. The dry-ground Taro is small and inferior, compared to the water-grown roots. Nutritious and pleasant, not unlike the texture of cheese when laid in slices on the table, in size and appearance like a Swedish turnip, it can be either boiled or baked. Hurricanes may destroy all other native food, but the Taro lies uninjured below the water; hence on islands, where it will grow, it forms one of the most permanent and valuable of all their crops. Our people also demanded that the _John Knox_ should bring them kava and tobacco. Kava is the plant, _Piper Methysticum_, from which they make a highly intoxicating drink. The girls and boys first chew it, and spit the juice into a basin; there it is mixed with water, and then strained through a fibrous cloth-like texture, which they get from the top of the cocoa-nut trees, where it surrounds the young nuts, and drops off with them when they are ripe. This they freely drink; it does not make them violent, but stupefies them and induces sleep like opium. A portion is always poured out to their Gods; and the dregs in every mouth after drinking are always spit out with the exclamation, “That’s for you, Kumesam!” It is sometimes offered and partaken of with very great ceremony; but its general use is as a soporific by the men, regularly after the evening meal. Women and children are not allowed to drink it. Many men have been attacked and murdered at night, when lying enfeebled and enfolded by kava. That, indeed, is their common mode of taking revenge and of declaring war. These angry men, who came to me about the _John Knox_, tried to smash in my window and kill my faithful dog; but I reasoned firmly and kindly with them, and they at last withdrew.