2l6 cook's first voyage 1769. 



and the women who visited us early in a morning used 

 to send, as soon as the sun was high, for a few of the 

 leaves, of which they made little bonnets to shade 

 their faces, at so small an expence of time and trou- 

 ble, that, when the sun was again low in the even- 

 ing, they used to throw them away. These bonnets, 

 however, did not cover the head, but consisted only 

 of a band that went round it, and a shade that pro- 

 jected from the forehead. 



Of the bark of the Poerou, they make ropes and 

 lines, from the thickness of an inch to the size of a 

 small packthread: with these they make nets for fish- 

 ing : of the fibres of the cocoa-nut they make thread, 

 for fastening together the several parts of their ca- 

 noes, and belts, either round or flat, twisted or plaited; 

 and of the bark of the Erowa, a kind of nettle which 

 grows in the mountains, and is therefore rather 

 scarce, they make the best fishing lines in the world : 

 with these they hold the strongest and most active 

 fish, such as Bonetas and Albicores, which would snap 

 our strongest silk lines in a minute, though they are 

 twice as thick. 



They make also a kind of seine, of a coarse broad 

 grass, the blades of which are like flags ; these they 

 twist and tie together in a loose manner, till the net, 

 which is about as wide as a large sack, is from sixty 

 to eighty fathom long : this they haul in shoal smooth 

 water, and its own weight keeps it so close to the 

 ground that scarcely a single fish can escape. 



In every expedient, indeed, for taking fish, they 

 are exceedingly ingenious ; they make harpoons of 

 cane, and point them with hard wood, which in 

 their hands strike fish more effectually, than those 

 which are headed with iron can do in ours, setting 

 aside the advantage of ours being fastened to a line, 

 so that the fish is secured if the hook takes place, 

 though it does not mortally wound him. 



Of fish-hooks they have two sorts, admirably 

 adapted in their construction as well to the purpose 



