1770. ROUND THE WORLD. 51 



poles that are fixed upright upon each gunwale, 

 and serve both for masts and yards : two ropes an- 

 swered the purpose of sheets, and were consequently 

 fastened above to the top of each pole. But clumsy 

 and inconvenient as this apparatus is, they make 

 good way before the wind, and are steered by two 

 men who sit in the stern, with each a paddle in his 

 hand for that purpose. 



Having said thus much of their workmanship, I 

 shall now give some account of their tools : they 

 have adzes, axes, and chisels, which serve them 

 also as augers for the boring of holes : as they 

 have no metal, their adzes and axes are made of a 

 hard black stone, or of a green talc, which is not 

 only hard but tough ; and their chisels of human 

 bone, or small fragments of jasper, which they chip 

 off from a block in sharp angular pieces like a gun- 

 flint. Their axes they value above all that they 

 possess, and never would part with one of them for 

 any thing that we could give : I once offered one of 

 the best axes I had in the ship, besides a number of 

 other things, for one of them, but the owner would 

 not sell it ; from which I conclude that good ones 

 are scarce among them. Their small tools of jasper, 

 which are used in finishing their nicest work, they 

 use till they are blunt, and then, as they have no 

 means of sharpening them, throw them away. We 

 had given the people at Tolaga a piece of glass, and 

 in a short time they found means to drill a hole 

 through it, in order to hang it round the neck as an 

 ornament by a thread ; and we imagine the tool 

 must have been a piece of this jasper. How they 

 bring their large tools first to an edge, and sharpen 

 the weapon which they call Patoo-Patoo, we could 

 not certainly learn ; but probably it is by bruising the 

 same substance to powder, and, with this, grinding 

 two pieces against each other. 



Their nets, particularly their seine, which is of an 

 enormous size, have been mentioned already : one of 



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