246 
SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPICAL 
into a socket, at the end of a staff of light wood, about as thick as a 
man’s wrist, and about seven or eight feet long : to the staff is tied 
one end of a loose line about three or four fathoms long, the other 
end of which is fastened to the peg. To strike the turtle, the peg is 
fixed into the socket, and when it has entered his body, and is re- 
tained there by the barb, the staff flies off and serves for a float to 
trace their victim in the water ; it assists also to tire him, till they 
can overtake him with their canoes and haul him on shore. One of 
these pegs, as I have mentioned already, we found in the body of a 
turtle, which had healed up over it. Their lines are from the thick- 
ness of a half-inch rope to the fineness of a hair, and are made of 
some vegetable substance, but what in particular we had no oppor- 
tunity to learn.” Hawkesworth’s Coll. vol. iii. p. 232. 
The above method differs only from that used by the natives of 
Rockingham Bay and Cape Flinders ; in that the float is another 
piece of light buoyant wood— the staff being retained in his hand 
when the turtle is struck. The reader will here recognize, in this 
instrument, a striking resemblance to the oonak and katteelik , the 
weapons which Captain Parry describes the Esquimaux to use in 
spearing the seal and whale. (Parry’s Second Voyage of Disco* 
very , pp. 507 and 509.) 
