We had not been long at anchor before we had visitors--half-breed
Maories, who, like the Finns and Canadians, are farmers,
fishermen, sailors, and shipwrights, as necessity arises. They
brought us potatoes--most welcome of all fruit to the sailor--
cabbages, onions, and "mutton birds." This latter delicacy is a
great staple of their flesh food, but is one of the strangest
dishes imaginable. When it is being cooked in the usual way,
i.e. by grilling, it smells exactly like a piece of roasting
mutton; but it tastes, to my mind, like nothing else in the world
so much as a kippered herring. There is a gastronomical paradox,
if you like. Only the young birds are taken for eating. They
are found, when unfledged, in holes of the rocks, and weigh
sometimes treble as much as their parents. They are exceedingly
fat; but this substance is nearly all removed from their bodies
before they are hung up in the smoke-houses. They are split open
like a haddock, and carefully smoked, after being steeped in
brine. Baskets, something like exaggerated strawberry pottles of
the old conical shape, are prepared, to hold each about a dozen
birds. They are lined with leaves, then packed with the birds,
the melted fat being run into all the interstices until the
basket is full.
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