The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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While Passing The Navigator Group, One Of My Fellow-Passengers, Who
Had Been For Some Time In Tutuila, Described The
Preparation of awa
poetically, the root "being masticated by the pearly teeth of dusky
flower-clad maidens;" but I was
An accidental witness of a nocturnal
"awa drinking" on Hawaii, and saw nothing but very plain prose. I
feel as if I must approach the subject mysteriously. I had no time
to tell you of the circumstance when it occurred, when also I was
completely ignorant that it was an illegal affair; and, now with a
sort of "guilty knowledge" I tremble to relate what I saw, and to
divulge that though I could not touch the beverage, I tasted the
root, which has an acrid pungent taste, something like horse-radish,
with an aromatic flavour in addition, and I can imagine that the
acquired taste for it must, like other acquired tastes, be perfectly
irresistible, even without the additional gratification of the
results which follow its exercise.
In the particular instance which I saw, two girls who were not
beautiful, and an old man who would have been hideous but for a set
of sound regular teeth, were sitting on the ground masticating the
awa root, the process being contemplated with extreme interest by a
number of adults. When, by careful chewing, they had reduced the
root to a pulpy consistence, they tossed it into a large calabash,
and relieved their mouths of superfluous saliva before preparing a
fresh mouthful.
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