188 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



proper knowledge and perseverance, the ocean will not 

 be found to be a far richer harvest-field than the land, 

 and that with vastly less labour than the earth demands 

 from those who till it. Now we must go north again ; 

 for the Pacific, unlike the Atlantic, has all down its 

 centre, and scattered over its vast area, a large number 

 of islands, inhabited by most interesting peoples, and 

 especially so for our present purpose. First of all, let 

 us consider the beautiful Hawaiian Group, or Sandwich 

 Islands, now a part of the great United States common- 

 wealth. These splendid islands, set in a silver sea, 

 are inhabited by a gentle, amiable race of almost 

 amphibious natives, who, from very early times, have 

 been fully alive to the advantages the sea had to offer 

 them in the matter of food ; in fact, it is not too much 

 to say that, with the trivial exception of a few birds, 

 the only flesh-food known to these Hawaiians, until 

 the arrival of Captain Cook among them, was fish if 

 what at first sight may appear an Irishism be per- 

 mitted. Of fruit and vegetables the kindly earth 

 yielded them an ample supply, but like all unsophisti- 

 cated mankind, they craved for animal food as well, 

 and they found in the seas laving their shores an 

 inexhaustible supply of the most varied kinds. The 

 desire to capture fish stimulated their inventive 

 genius both in the direction of canoe-building and in 

 the manufacture of fishing-tackle, in both of which 

 arts they developed amazing fertility of resource, in 

 the entire absence of metal tools. Nowhere in the 

 world are there to be seen such wonderful pieces of 

 workmanship in the way of hooks, lines, and nets, 

 wrought in the crudest way and from the most primi- 

 tive materials, as may be witnessed in the Pacific 



