242 GENERAL ACCOUNT OF NEW ZEALAND cuap. x 
say more, but find myself much inferior to the task. I 
shall therefore content myself with saying that their taste led 
them into two materially different styles, as I will call them. 
One was entirely formed of a number of spirals differently 
connected, the other was in a much more wild taste, and I 
may truly say was like nothing but itself. The truth with 
which the lines were drawn was surprising; but even more 
so was their method of connecting several spirals into one 
piece, inimitably well, intermingling the ends in so dexterous 
a manner that it was next to impossible for the eye to trace 
the connections. The beauty of all their carvings, however, 
depended entirely on the design, for the execution was so 
rough that when you came near it was difficult to see 
any beauty in the things which struck you most at a 
distance. 
After having said so much of their workmanship, it will 
be necessary to say something of their tools. As they 
have no metals these are made of stone of different 
kinds, their hatchets especially of any hard stone they can 
get, but chiefly of a kind of green talc, which is very hard 
and at the same time tough. With axes of this stone they 
cut so clean that it would often puzzle a man to say whether 
the wood they have shaped was or was not cut with an iron 
hatchet. These axes they value above all their riches, and 
would seldom part with them for anything we could offer. 
Their nicer work, which requires nicer-edged tools, they do 
with fragments of jasper, which they break and use the sharp 
edges till they become blunt, after which they throw them 
away as useless, for it is impossible ever again to sharpen 
them. I suppose it was with these fragments of jasper 
that at Tolaga they bored a hole through a piece of glass 
that we had given them, just large enough to admit a thread 
in order to convert it into an ornament. I must confess I 
am quite ignorant of what method they use to cut and polish 
their weapons, which are made of very hard stone. 
Their cloths are made exactly in the same manner as 
by the inhabitants of South America, some of whose work- 
manship, procured at Rio de Janeiro, I have on board. The 
