Returning from the volcano towards Upolu, we had a meeting house to dedicate at a place called Pololu, and the Saints there had prepared a feast on the occasion.

An account of a Hawaiian feast may be interesting to my readers and I will describe this one. The vegetable portion of the feast consisted of poi. This I have before described to you. It is not kept in dishes of earthenware but in calabashes, some of which are very large and will hold several gallons of the food. On this occasion the people sat on the ground on mats. For tablecloths there were large green leaves of the plant called ki. On these were placed packages of beef, pork, fowl, dog, and goat, done up in the leaves in which they had been cooked. Fish also was served up in this manner.

As soon as the blessing was asked, every one dipped his or her forefingers into the “poi,” and lifting as much as the fingers would hold, they passed them into their mouths, throwing their heads back as they did so, to get a good mouthful. The hogs, chickens and little dogs were speedily dissected, the fingers being the only knives, forks and spoons used among them. The scene was one of true enjoyment.

The Sandwich Islander is never so happy, so musical, so full of pleasant talk, as when seated at a good meal; and the quantity one eats on such occasions would astonish an American who had never seen them. Usually they are particular about having their hands clean, and eating with due respect to each other’s rights. One waits for the other to put his fingers in the poi and their ideas of decorum and manners, such as they are, are as strict as ours.

We Elders who ate with them were also seated on mats and ate the same kind of food that they did, only in place of using our fingers we either used spoons or small paddles which we whittled out of wood, to convey the food to our mouths, thinking it would be better to set them an example in this respect.

I scarcely think, though, that any of our party would prefer dog meat to beef, goat or chicken, though I must say that if it were not for prejudice, I think the dog meat as wholesome and as clean as the pork; for the dogs which they eat in that country are a peculiar breed, the flesh of which is very sweet and tender. They are very particular in feeding them; they keep them cleaner and do not give them such disagreeable food as they do to their hogs. But there is something repugnant to people raised as we have been, in the idea of eating dog meat.

A story was told me by Brother Napela of a trick which he and some other natives played off on some white men at a feast which they partook of at a place called Waikapu on the island of Maui. The white men were merchants from Lahaina, and had been invited over to this feast. They had meats and fish of every kind nearly, and among the rest had a number of roasted pigs and roasted dogs. One of the natives suggested, as a good trick to play on the white men, that they sever the heads of the pigs, and put them with the dogs, and take the dogs’ heads and put them with the pigs. They did so. Of course the merchants did not want to eat dog meat, and would not touch any of the meat where the dogs’ heads were, but ate heartily of what they supposed were pigs. The natives tried to persuade them to eat the other meat. “Oh no,” they said, “these delicious pigs are good enough for us,” and they would not touch the other.

I may say here that the native method of cooking meat is superior to ours. They contrive to preserve all the juices of the meat in it while it is being cooked.

Nothing was said to the merchants about the trick that had been played upon them until the feast was ended, and they could not be persuaded that they had eaten dogs, until the bones were shown to them, which they knew to be not those of pigs. They tried hard to be sick at the thought of having eaten dog meat, but had to confess that it was as good meat as they ever ate.

An unsuspecting person, if served with dog meat, would never dream that it was anything but sucking pig.