THE SEA FISHER IN FOREIGN PARTS 485 



fish were feeding briskly. The bone hooks are universal 

 among savage peoples in all latitudes. 



The South Sea Islanders, like the Maoris, are skilful and 

 most persevering fishermen, and adopt a variety of methods to add 

 to their simple diet the fish which cruise around the reefs and 

 rocks. Some of their wholesale methods of capture are very 

 ingenious. The spears have barbed prongs, or they bristle with 

 sharp fishbones, and most hunters of curios will probably have 

 found in native huts carefully preserved specimens as much 

 prized as war implements, and as worthy of collection. The 

 natives in many of the islands are adroit in fishing the reefs 

 with stake nets, and a kind of shrimp net stretched on poles is 

 used for the fry resembling whitebait. Traps are manufactured 

 of plaited cane, and artistically designed with something like a 

 pattern. The general idea is to produce a basket into which the 

 fish can enter but not return. In one of the islands I heard of 

 another trap made of prickly palm branches, which answers the 

 same purpose as the basket, though it is a much simpler affair, 

 and is placed on the edge of the reef by the fisherman diving 

 and putting a stone on the tether, leaving its whereabouts to be 

 indicated by a float. The natives have rudely understood the 

 art of spinning for ages, and their bait is a pearl shell shaped 

 like a fish, with a tortoiseshell hook attached. The point of this 

 is sometimes bent inwards like a shepherd's crook, and some- 

 times only slightly curved. One pattern is fashioned bodily out 

 of a clam shell, but to this a bait is fixed. Iron hooks are made 

 from nails, and by never allowing the fish a chance of turning, 

 the natives become adepts in dragging out fish with their 

 barbless and primitive contrivances. On many of the smaller 

 islands which find no place on maps, there are temporary 

 fishing stations visited by the natives at the seasons when they 

 know by long tradition payable fishing is to be had. Turtles 

 are caught by lassoing. 



