After satisfying our curiosity in seeing the women make poye, we descended the hill where several men were preparing a tarrow patch. It was forty feet square, excavated a little, and an embankment two feet high thrown up all around it, descending with a considerable angle from the top to the base, making it very broad at the bottom. The labourers had advanced thus far, and were beating the area and inner sides of the embankment with broad heavy paddles, going over it a great many times. It appeared very hard and firm when we saw them at work; but still, they told us, that they had to beat it a great deal more. When this is completed, the tops of the tarrow that have been cut off for the purpose, are set in the ground and lightly flooded with water; after it has taken root and began to grow thriftily, more water is let in upon it; the tarrow well grown, will generally be covered with water to the depth of one or two feet. It is about the size of a beet, and takes a year or more to come to its greatest perfection. It has clusters of broad bright green leaves, that in shape and appearance are a good deal like the common pond lilly. It is a very nutricious vegetable, and constitutes the principal means of subsistence of the Sandwich Islanders. The huts of the natives were very small, and although in the midst of cultivation and fertility, the inhabitants seemed to be wretchedly poor. They did not appear much more civilized than the natives of the Marquesas; their habitations were certainly less comfortable. Returning to the village, we saw a number of people scraping sticks that looked like our elder, and preserving the inner bark. Upon inquiring its use, they told us it was to catch fish with. When eaten by the fish, they come to the top of the water and are taken out by hand. It is said, the fish are not the worse for this.