On the way back we encountered a French Catholic priest, and after a little chat the old man took us to his house and initiated us into the mysteries of Kava drinking. Stevenson tells us so much about Kava and Kava feasts, that I make no apology for describing the process. The priest’s room was very plainly furnished, in the centre was the bowl carved out of a solid block of wood and standing on four legs. That it had been long in use was evident from the fine opalescent enamelling of the inside. Beside it were the Kava stones.
Two native girls appeared bearing the Kava—the root of the Piper Methysticum, about which in its raw state there was nothing at all distinctive. Pieces of the Kava were torn, or bitten off, pounded between the two stones and cast into the bowl. Then while one of the girls brought water and poured it upon the pounded root, the other, with shapely brown arms bare to the shoulder, kneaded the mass, until the whole virtue of the Kava was expressed into the water.
Not until the bowl was half full of a frothy, muddy mixture did the straining process begin. A lump of fibre, made from the bark of the yellow hibiscus, was cast into the Kava, and the girls with arms dipped in the mixture up to the elbow, proceeded to take up the liquor with this improvised sponge, wring it over the bowl till it was dry, and fill it again, repeating this process until the fibre had absorbed all the gritty particles.
NATIVE GIRLS MAKING KAVA
The Kava was now ready for drinking, and with great ceremony one of the girls filled a half coconut shell with the liquor and handed it to one of our number, who, as the custom is, drained it without drawing a breath, and then sent the empty cup spinning like a tee-to-tum across the floor to the girls.
My turn came soon and I never saw a more uninviting looking drink, nevertheless I boldly followed the example set me and emptied the shell. The bitter, hot, acrid taste seemed to me at first nauseating to the last degree—but after! To appreciate Kava you must estimate it from the standpoint of After. My mouth felt clean, cool, wholesome, and invigorated as it had never felt before, and never will again until by good chance I light upon another bowl of Kava.
“Have you found it good?” inquired the old priest in French. My “Mais oui, Monsieur, après,” raised a general laugh. Nevertheless the opinion was unanimous that it is only in the “Après” that you can enjoy Kava. To define a sensation is difficult, but most of us are familiar with the effect of the external application of menthol. Transfer that effect to an internal sensation (on a very hot day), and you will then know something of the delights of Kava drinking.
That afternoon we hired a sailing-boat and paid a visit to a cave some four miles down the harbour. The entrance looked impossible for so large a boat as ours, but our native boatman hauled down the sail and assured us that it was all right. Like Brer Rabbit, we “lay low,” and when we lifted ourselves up we were inside.
Wonderful, dreamlike, unreal, impossible: that was the general verdict. Like giant icicles that had never felt the touch of frost the huge, green, semi-transparent and sharply pointed stalactites clustered about the entrance. From floor to vaulted roof rose buttressed columns dividing the cave into shadowy alcoves, and as for size—you could put the Blue Grotto at Capri into one of those alcoves. The lofty arched roof was fretted like that of a cathedral, but it was the light, not the vast outlines, that arrested me, and held me spellbound—the weird effect of the sunshine without reflected through the medium of this dim water world.