‘The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend;
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own;
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone.
Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth—
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth.’
‘However, the edible dog is not one of your common curs, but a dainty animal, fed exclusively on vegetables, chiefly taro (a root), in the form of poë (dough), and at the age of two years is considered a dish wherewith to regale royalty. Indeed, the Sandwich Island monarch, I suspect, would be always well satisfied to see it before him, in spite of the assertion of Dr. Kidd, that ‘it is worthy of consideration that the flesh of those animals, of whose living services we stand hourly in need, as the horse and the dog, are so unpalatable, that we are not tempted to eat them unless in cases of dreadful necessity.’ The doctor probably never assisted at a native luaü or feast, or associated with the trappers upon the prairies of the Far West.’[6]
Mr. John Dunn, in his History of the Oregon Territory, tells a story of a Canadian cook, who, wishing to do honour to a dear and respected friend, whom he had been dining with on board his ship, studied long what he could get good enough to set before him, and at last bethought him of dog, which is, or was, a favourite dish among Canadian voyageurs or boatmen.
At the banquet the old boatswain ate heartily of it, as did the cook. After he had done, the cook enquired how he had enjoyed his dinner. He said it was beautiful. He then asked him whether he knew what he had been dining on? He said he supposed from a goat.
‘Yes,’ says the cook, ‘you have been eating from a goat with von long tail, that don’t like grass or heather.’