374 FISH-HOOKS. NETS. 



These they used as spades or hoes.* They had fish-hooks made 

 of mother-of-pearl, and every fisherman made them for him- 

 self. They generally served for the double purpose of hook 

 FIG. 152. and bait. "The shell f is first cut into 



square pieces, by the edge of another 

 shell, and wrought into a form cor- 

 responding with the outline of the hook 

 by pieces of coral, which are sufficiently 

 rough to perform the office of a file ; a 

 hole is then bored in the middle, the 

 drill being no other than the first stone 

 they pick up that has a sharp corner; 

 this they fix into the end of a piece of 

 bamboo, and turn it between the hands 

 like a chocolate mill ; when the shell is 

 perforated and the hole sufficiently wide, 

 a small file of coral is introduced, by the 

 application of which the hook is in a 

 I' short time completed, few costing the 

 artificer more time than a quarter of an 

 hour. From the bark of the Poerou, a 

 species of Hibiscus, they made ropes and 

 lines, from the thickness of an inch to the 

 south sea Fish-hook. gize of ft small packthread ; with these they 



make nets for fishing." They had also a kind of seine net, 

 made " 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 fathoms 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." They also used 

 certain leaves and fruit which, when thrown into the 



* Wilson, Missionary Yoyage to the South Pacific, p. 245. 

 f Cook's Voyage Bound the World, vol. i., p. 483 ; vol. ii., p. 218. 



