ABSTRACT

The plant from which this national beverage is made is pretty well known to the public from the description given in several South Sea books of travel. It is one of the Piperacere, with the pendulous flower-catkins of its kind, broad, deep-green, veined leaves, and spotted stalks knotted at regular intervals like those of the bamboo. It is the Chakau or Choko of Ponape, the Seka of Kusaie, the Namoluk of the New Hebrides, the Yangona of Fiji, and the Kava or Ava of the south-western Polynesians. Botanists term it the Piper Methysticum or Intoxicating Pepper. The modes of preparation are various. In Samoa, by the chewing of the Aualuma or bevy of village girls. In Tonga, Fiji and Ponape, by pounding between flat stones. In Samoa, however, nowadays, the ruminating process so horrifying to English readers and certain oversqueamish early voyagers has given place in the civilised districts to grating. It is styled the nasty root and the accursed Nquor by certain good and worthy missionaries whose convictions are sometimes sturdier than their charity. The symptoms, however, which follow an over-

There is a closely allied species widely distributed, which the Yap people variously call Langr."l, Thlangz"1 or Gabut", the Marianne folk Pupul-en-ant"tt", the Marquesans Kavakava-atua, the Samoans Ava-ava-at"tu, and the Tahitians Avaava-atua. This is the plant whose leaves supply the wrapper of the fruit of the betel or areca palm, extensively used as a chew in the Malayan area, of which Yap and the Mariannes are the outposts. Strangely enough Yap, where kava drinking is not, has kept the old Polynesian word in a recognisable form; whereas in Ponape and Kusaie, where there are two varieties of areca palm (Katar." and Kotop) growing in great plenty in the highlands, betel-nut chewing is not in vogue, and kava drinking is. Yet the Ponapeans and Kusaians have lost or tabued the old Polynesian word, and adopted one which, to say the least of it, offers a curious resemblance to the Japanese Saka or Sake, which in that tongue denotes strong liquor in general, and a weak rice-spirit in particular. Unfortunately I had not the chance of visiting the basaltic islands in the great lagoon of Hogolu or Ruk, where I am told both the kava and the areca palm grow. I might thus have determined once and for all whether these Caroline natives are kava drinkers or betel-nut chewers.