TOXGATABU. 280 



Great care must be taken that this small heap of powder is not 

 shaken or blown away. 



The friction being kept up slowly and steadily, the sides of 

 the groove begin to blacken and soon to smoke. Eapid strokes 

 are now resorted to, the fine dust rubbed off becomes black like 

 soot, and at last ignites at the end of the stroke just as it is 

 pushed into the small accumulated heap, which acts as tinder. 

 A tiny wreath of smoke ascending from the heap shows that the 

 operation has been successful. A gentle blowing soon sets the 

 whole heap aglow. 



The operation is excessively tiring to the wrists, since it has 

 to be prolonged for a considerable time, but the greater the 

 practice the less the waste of force. I have never succeeded in 

 getting fire myself, though Mr. Darwin succeeded at Tahiti; 

 and I have seen several Englishmen do so after practice, and 

 especially Dr. Goode, E.K, who frequently lighted a candle 

 in tins way to show me the process on board H.M.S. " Dido" at 

 Fiji. It is easy enough to get smoke and char the wood a 

 little, but very difficult to get the actual fire. The slightest 

 halt during the friction is fatal. 



The old stone implements have entirely gone out of use in 

 Tonga, and they are not plentiful, but I bought several from 

 natives who had them put away in their houses. They call 

 them "toki Tonga," Tongan axe, or adze, in distinction to foreign 

 axes, whereas the Sandwich Islanders spoke of their adzes when 

 I was buying them as stone adzes, " pohaku koi." All the stone 

 adzes which I saw were unmounted ; no doubt the handles had 

 been used long ago, when iron was introduced, to fasten hoop- 

 iron blades on to in the place of the discarded stone ones. The 

 stone adze blades I procured were all of simple form like those 

 of Fiji, and not with complex curved surfaces and shanks like 

 those of Tahiti and some other Polynesian Islands. 



The manners and customs of the ancient Tongans are pro- 

 bably better understood than those of any other Polynesian 

 Islanders, because of the existence of Mariner's well-known 

 account of them.* 



The Island of Tonga is about 27 miles in extreme length, 



* " An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands. Compiled from 



U 



