THE GOOSING 227 
birds or so left outside, and then the men stopped killing 
and the children were turned into the big ring, while the 
elders stood outside, and each backed their own off- 
spring : who could catch the most—a kind of game—one 
choom against the other. So the children screamed 
and snatched and sprawled, while the men shouted 
and encouraged, and the women laughed fit to split 
their sides. Poor geese! they made a good show for 
it, but they were all caught at last. 
I cannot say I liked all this. On the contrary, I felt 
very unhappy. But there it was. 
Then the counting began. We had taken in the net 
alone, 
3300 brents, 
13 bean, 
12 white-fronted. 
Total, 3325 geese. 
Onaska kept the record, as the counting went on, with 
notches on a stick. 
Then the geese were again subdivided and apportioned 
out in heaps, so many toa choom. One point of much 
interest for me was the fact that both our varieties of 
brent, the light- and the dark-breasted, were represented 
here. 
July 19th.—It was so late by the time all this was 
finished, being indeed somewhere about two o’clock in 
the morning, that it was decided to leave all stowing 
for a second visit. 
