288 THE OCEAN. 



Some of their modes of fishing are highly curious 

 and ingenious. One, which is very successful, 

 reminds us of a wire mouse-trap. A circular space 

 in the lagoon, of about three or four yards in 

 diameter, is enclosed by building up a wall from 

 the bottom to the surface, in a part where it is 

 not very deep. In one part of the top an opening 

 is left a foot or two wide, and five or six inches 

 deep. From each side of this aperture another 

 stone wall, likewise reaching to the surface, is 

 built to the length of fifty or a hundred yards 

 in a diverging direction, so as to iaclude a large 

 space of water, which is open at one end, but, be- 

 coming narrower and narrower, leads into the cir- 

 cular pen. Fishes are usually found in these traps 

 every morning, which are either taken out with a 

 hand-net, or allowed to remain till wanted, as in a 

 preserve. 



Many fishes, which have the habit of springing 

 out of water when alarmed, are taken by means 

 of rafts. These are from fifteen to twenty feet 

 long, and six or eight feet wide, built of light wood 

 such as the native hibiscus. Along one side a fence 

 or screen is raised to the height of four or five 

 feet, by fixing a row of upright stakes in the raft, 

 to which slender poles are attached horizontally, one 

 above another. A large party of men proceed with 

 twenty or thirty of these rafts to a shallow part of 

 the lagoon, and then arrange themselves in a circle, 

 enclosing a considerable space of water. They then 

 gradually narrow the circle by approaching each 

 other, keeping the fenced edge of the raft on the 



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