It is hard work, and the men don't wear any clothes while engaged in
it. It is not a pleasant-looking operation. They often dip their
hands in a calabash of water to aid them in removing the sticky
mass, and they always look hot and tired. When it is removed from
the board into large calabashes, it is reduced to paste by the
addition of water, and set aside for two or three days to ferment.
When ready for use it is either lilac or pink, and tastes like sour
bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when it is in its dry
state, it is called paiai, or hard food, and is then packed in ti
leaves in 20 lb. bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the
Guano Islands. It is a prolific and nutritious plant. It is
estimated that forty square feet will support an Hawaiian for a
year.
The melon and kalo patches represent a certain amount of spasmodic
industry, but in most other things the natives take no thought for
the morrow. Why should they indeed? For while they lie basking in
the sun, without care of theirs, the cocoanut, the breadfruit, the
yam, the guava, the banana, and the delicious papaya, which is a
compound of a ripe apricot with a Cantaloupe melon, grow and ripen
perpetually.
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