PISHING. 
207 
these they obtain -with the seine; but their favourite 
sport is trolling for bonettas, which are here large and 
well-flavoured. 
These fish usually frequent the bays morning and 
evening, to procure a meal off“ the tiny clupsea; this, 
therefore, is used alive as the bait, one person in each 
canoe being employed with a small line and hook to 
take these lesser fry, while the others stand up and 
with a long cane and line keep the tempting prey 
flickering about on the surfare of the water, where it 
soon attracts the hungry bonetta, who in his turn falls 
into the trap of the wary fisherman. It is an excit- 
ing recreation, and some of the officers were very fond 
of it, especially as enabling them to indulge in a luxury 
which though so plentiful, is difficult to be obtained ; 
what the Edeeyahs do not require for their own tribe 
can only be purchased by tobacco, and they would very 
often refuse half a dollar for a fish which five or six 
leaves of the favourite weed would have procured. 
The canoes are long, rather flat-bottomed; sharp- 
pointed forward, but square aft, where the steersman 
sits ; he is usually a person of some importance, and 
has the hair done up behind into a mass of red clay, 
so large and weighty that it is impossible to look at 
him in the frail bark, without feeling that the least 
motion in a wrong direction would overturn him, and 
down he would go like a stone; swimming being an 
art almost unknown among them. The sail is made 
of grass fibre. On the top of the light cane used as 
