were separated from the Tahitians, for the Sandwich Islanders knew nothing of it till the English brought it to them from Tahiti.[1] The use of the intoxicating liquor known as ava, kava, or yangona, appears to be peculiar to Polynesia, and therefore probably to have been invented there. It is true that the usual, though not universal practice of preparing it by chewing, gives it some resemblance to liquors so prepared on the American continent, but these latter are of an entirely different character, being fermented liquors of the nature of beer, made from vegetables rich in starch, while the ava is not fermented at all, the juice of the plant it is made from being intoxicating in its fresh state.[2]
The miscellaneous pieces of evidence given in this chapter have been selected less as giving grounds for arguments safe from attack, than as examples of the sort of material with which the ethnologist has to deal. The uncertainty of many of the inferences he makes must be counterbalanced by their number, and by the concurrence of independent lines of reasoning in favour of the same view. But in the arguments given here in illustration of the general method, only one side of history has
- ↑ Cook's First Voy. H., vol. ii. p. 198; Third Voy., vol. iii. p. 141.
- ↑ The etymology of kava or ava is of interest. Its original meaning may have been that of bitterness or pungency; kawa, N. Z = pungent, bitter, strong (as spirits, etc.); 'ava, Tah. = a bitter, disagreeable taste; kava, Rar. Mang. Nuk., 'a'ava, Sam., awa awa, Haw. =sour, bitter, pungent. Thence the name may have been given, not only to the plant of which the intoxicating drink is made, the Macropiper methysticum, kara, Tong. Rar. Nuk.; 'ara, Sam. Tah. Haw.; but also in N. Z. to the Macropiper excelsum, or kawa kawa, and in Tahiti to tobacco, 'ava 'ava. Lastly, the drink is named in Tahiti and in other islands from the plant it is expressed from. But Mariner's Tongan vocabulary seems to go the other way; cava = the pepper plant; also the root of this plant, of which is made a peculiar kind of beverage, etc.; cawna = bitter, brackish, also intoxicated with cava, or anything else. This looks as though the name of the plant gave a name to the quality of bitterness, as we say "peppery" in the sense of hot. (See the Vocabularies of Mariner, Hale, Buschmann, and the Church Miss. Soc., N. Z.) Southey (Hist, of Brazil, vol. i. p. 245) compares the word kava with the South American word caou-in or kaawy, a liquor made from maize or the mandioc root by chewing, boiling with water, and fermenting; but the idea of bitterness or pungency is unsuitable to this liquor. Dias (Dic. da Lingua Tupy) gives perhaps a more accurate form, cauím = rvinho, a derivative perhaps from cań = beber (vinho). To show how easily such accidental coincidences as that of kava and cauím may be found, a German root may be pointed out for both, looking a* suitable as though it were a real one, kauen, to chew.
