Thus eaten, it has a mild and pleasing flavour.
Sometimes after having been roasted in the fire, the natives snatch it briskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of the yielding rind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture, which they call 'bo-a-sho'.

I never could endure this compound, and indeed the preparation is not greatly in vogue among the more polite Typees.
There is one form, however, in which the fruit is occasionally served, that renders it a dish fit for a king.

As soon as it is taken from the fire the exterior is removed, the core extracted, and the remaining part is placed in a sort of shallow stone mortar, and briskly worked with a pestle of the same substance.

While one person is performing this operation, another takes a ripe cocoanut, and breaking it in halves, which they also do very cleverly, proceeds to grate the juicy meat into fine particles.

This is done by means of a piece of mother-of-pearl shell, lashed firmly to the extreme end of a heavy stick, with its straight side accurately notched like a saw.