When explaining this fact, Mr. Hardy says, though I can only take his word for it, as I was not there, that the chief looked at him with a hungry eye and murmured to Dr. Willey, “He go in nicee, make good kai-kai.” But to return to native diet: sago, taro, sweet potato, sugar-cane, bananas, and a very poor kind of bread fruit, constitute their chief vegetable food; fish and occasionally a pig are their only other eatables. The cooking of these articles is generally done in rough bowls or in a European iron pot. When anything special is going to be eaten it is broiled in an earth oven. Betel-nut chewing, however, seems almost to satisfy these natives, for their meals are most erratic, and they often only take a small piece of fish with them when they are going out for a whole day’s tramp or work. The method of chewing betel-nut is rather interesting. The nut is about the size of a walnut. {112} This they place in their mouth with a green leaf and chew it. When it is well under way they dip a small stick into their lime gourds and add a modicum of lime or ground coral to it. The effect of this mixture is, so some say, equal to a glass of good grog, but, though it acts as a strong stimulant, the natives do not seem to suffer any ill effects from it. Chewing is in no way restricted to the males, both women and young girls favour the practice, and relish the betel-nut as a great dainty. {113} CHAPTER XI Some clever ways of catching fish—How the bonito is landed—Native nets—Pig-hunting—The sly opossum and the crocodile. Lazy as the Solomon islanders are they are excellent sportsmen, and be it man-hunting, pig-hunting, or fishing, it is all the same, they go in for it with a fine relish. Cunning and dexterity play an important part in their methods, and make up for their want of up-to-date appliances. At fishing they surpass most native races, their ingenuity in this sport being remarkable. Where the white man will fail with all his latest improvements in fishing tackle, these uncultivated men will succeed with quickly improvised and crude materials. For bonito-fishing they have a remarkable device, and entice these large fish from the deep sea and catch them as easily as an English boy will secure a stickleback. It is one of the most {114} exciting of their sports to watch. A man stands on a rock, for preference, and throws out a line some thirty or forty feet in length, attached to the end of which is a floating bait of some fatty matter; below him and bending double into the water is another native, who works a little piece of bamboo cut off at the joints and having a hollowed-out groove in it. With his thumb in the end of the hollow and his hand gripping the stick he works this backwards and forwards in the water, giving it a peculiar twist, which makes it send forth a weird and uncanny noise. This sound, so they say, is in imitation of the cry of female or male, I forget which, bonito, and so attracts to it a mate.