AGRICULTURE. WOMEN. 457 



of a quill toothpick. In digging, this flattened side is kept 

 downwards. When preparing a piece of ground for yams, a 

 number of men are employed, divided into groups of three or 

 four. Each man being furnished with a digging-stick, they 

 drive them into the ground so as to enclose a circle of about 

 two feet in diameter. When, by repeated strokes, the sticks 

 reach the depth of eighteen inches, they are used as levers, 

 and the mass of soil between them is thus loosened and 

 raised."* The clods are then broken up by boys with short 

 sticks. Weeding " is accomplished by means of a tool used 

 like a Dutch hoe, the workman squatting so as to bring the 

 handle nearly level with the ground. The blade used formerly 

 to be made of a bone from the back of a turtle, or a plate of 

 tortoise-shell, or the valve of a large oyster, or large kind of 

 pinna. In the Windward Islands they use a large dibble, 

 eight feet long, about eighteen inches in circumference, and 

 tapering to a point. They had also pruning knives of" tor- 

 toise-shell lashed to the end of a rod ten feet long. They are 

 skilful in basket-making, and have good strong nets made of 

 creepers or of sinnet. 



The women are kept in great subjection. "The men fre- 

 quently tie them up and flog them. Like other property, 

 wives might be sold at pleasure, and the usual price is a 

 musket. Those who purchase them may do with them as 

 they please, even to knocking them on the head." Erskine, 

 however, gives a more satisfactory account of the position 

 held by the women; and it appears that they are on the 

 whole more chaste than is the case in some of the other 

 Pacific Islands, which is saying something for them, but cer- 

 tainly not much. Although so lax in some things, they were 

 very strict in others, and it was thought improper in some of 

 these islands for husband and wife to spend the night under 

 the same roof. 



* Figi and the Figians, vol. i. p. 63. 



