Chapman. — 0/t the Working of Greenstone. 499 



water, they contrive to cut a furrow in the stone, first on one 

 side, then on the other, until the piece may be broken at the 

 thin place. The fragments that come off are again sawn by 

 women and children into ear-pendants. With pretty constant 

 work — that is, when not talking, eating, doing nothing, or 

 sleeping — a man will get a slab into a rough triangular shape, 

 and about liin. thick, in a month, and, with the aid of 

 some blocks of sharp, sandy-gritted limestone, will work down 

 the faces and edges of it into proper shape in six weeks more. 

 The most difficult part of the work is to drill the hole for 

 the thong in the handle. For this, pieces of sharp flint 

 are obtained from the Pahutani cliff, forty miles to the 

 north, and are set in the end of a split stick, being lashed in 

 very neatly. The stick is about 15in. or 18in. long, and is to 

 become the spindle of a large teetotum drill. For the circular 

 plate of this instrument the hardened intervertebral cartilage 

 of a whale is taken. A hole is made through, and the stick 

 firmly and accurately fixed in it. Two strings are then 

 attached to the upper end of the stick, and by pulling 

 them a rapid rotatory motion is given to the drill. When 

 an indentation is once made in the ■pounamu the work is easy. 

 As each flint becomes blunted it is replaced by another in the 

 stick, until the work is done. Two meres were in process of 

 formation while we stayed at Taramakau, and one had just 

 been finished. A native will get up at night to have a polish 

 at a favourite mere, or take one down to the beach and work 

 away by the surf. A piece of pounamu and some slate will be 

 carried when travelling, and at every halt a rub will be taken 

 at it. Poor fellows ! They had no tobacco, and a grind at a 

 piece of hard inanga seemed to be a stimulant." 



The condition of many of the pieces separated as above 

 described, by means of two cuts and a break, attests the fact 

 that the workman often had a very indifferent eye, the two 

 cuts not coming opposite each other. In a piece before me 

 less than lin. thick they are nearly ^in. " out," giving a very 

 awkward edge to rub down afterwards. I attribute this to the 

 fact that, on the East Coast at least, the workers were generally 

 very old men, past their fighting-days, whose eyes had become 

 impaired with smoke and dirt, as they often are among these 

 people. 



What strikes me as very remarkable is the very poor pieces 

 of stone on which a vast amount of labour is expended. It 

 looks as if when a Maori workman could not get a good piece 

 he cheerfully spent months, perhaps years, of labour on a bad, 

 perhaps a very bad, piece. It was, perhaps, only at rare inter- 

 vals that a tribal expedition returned from the remote West 

 Coast with a new supply. A block which lies before me 

 seems to have some very fine stone in it, with some very poor 



