Note 2 — The Big Feast

The bringing in and storing of the ine and malage fruits commence at an early stage. The ine fruits are collected when quite ripe; they split the large fruit heads up into two or more parts, put these into baskets roughly made of cane (at least half a fruit head in each basket), and place these baskets in the avale or ceiling of the emone, where the fruits get dried and smoked by the heat and smoke of the fire constantly burning beneath. If, as is sometimes the case, the emone has no avale one is constructed specially for the purpose. The fruits are left there until required; in fact, if taken away from the smoke, they would go bad. Sometimes, instead of putting portions of the fruit heads into baskets, they take out from them the almond-shaped seeds, which are the portions to be eaten, string these together, each seed being tied round and not pierced, and hang them to the roof of the emone above the avale. The fruits of the malage are gathered and put into holes or side streams by a river, and there left for from seven to ten months, until the pulp, which is very poisonous, is all rotted away, a terrible smell being emitted during the process; they then take the pips or seeds, the insides of which, after the surrounding shells have been cracked, are the edible parts, and place these in baskets made out of the almost amplexicaul bases of the leaves of a species of palm tree, and so store them also on the avale of the emone.2