154 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF SOUTH SEA ISLANDS CH. vir 



bonnets in a few minutes, and threw away as soon as the 

 sun became again low in the afternoon. These, however, 

 serve merely for a shade: coverings for their heads they 

 have none except their hair, for these bonnets or shades only 

 fit round their heads, not upon them. 



Besides these things, they are very neat in making fish- 

 ing-nets in the same manner as we do, ropes of about an 

 inch thick, and lines from the poorou, threads with which 

 they sew together their canoes, and also belts from the fibres 

 of the cocoanut, plaited either round or flat. All their 

 twisting work they do upon their thighs in a manner very 

 difficult to describe, and, indeed, unnecessary, as no European 

 can want to learn how to perform an operation which his 

 instruments will do for him so much faster than it can 

 possibly be done by hand. But of all the strings that they 

 make none are so excellent as the fishing-lines, etc., made of 

 the bark of the erowa, a kind of frutescent nettle (Urtica 

 argentea) which grows in the mountains, and is consequently 

 rather scarce. Of this they make the lines which are 

 employed to take the briskest and most active fish, bonitos, 

 albecores, etc. As I never made experiments with it, I can 

 only describe its strength by saying that it was infinitely 

 stronger than the silk lines which I had on board made in 

 the best fishing shops in London, though scarcely more than 

 half as thick. 



In every expedient for taking fish they are vastly 

 ingenious ; their seine nets for fish to mesh themselves in, 

 etc., are exactly like ours. They strike fish with harpoons 

 made of cane and pointed with hard wood more dexterously 

 than we can do with ours that are headed with iron, for we 

 who fasten lines to ours need only lodge them in the fish to 

 secure it, while they, on the other hand, throwing theirs 

 quite from them, must either mortally wo and the fish or 

 lose him. Their hooks, indeed, as they are not made of iron, 

 are necessarily very different from ours in construction. 

 They are of two sorts ; the first, witte-witte, is used for towing. 

 Fig. 1 represents this in profile, and Fig. 2 the view of the 

 bottom part. The shank (a) is made of mother-of-pearl, 



