286 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
person who fed them. I have been several times with 
the young chief, when he has sat down by the side of the 
hole, and by giving a shrill sort of whistle has brought 
out an enormous eel, which has moved about the sur¬ 
face of the water, and eaten with confidence out of his 
master’s hand. 
The sea-fish are numerous | among the principal is 
the salmon. The bonito, the flying fish, the operu or 
herring, the alibcores, the sting-ray, the shark, the por¬ 
poise, and the dolphin, are caught in the lake or the 
sea, and are supposed to belong to the owners of the 
opposite shore. In the latter, any person is in general 
allowed to use his lines, nets, &c. but if the proprie¬ 
tors of the land on the coast wish to preserve the fish 
of the adjacent sea, they rahiii^ or restrict, the ground, 
by fixing up a pole on the reef or shore, with a bunch 
of bamboo leaves attached to it. By this mark it is 
understood that the fish are tabu, and fishing prohibited 5 
and no person will trespass on these parts, without the 
consent of the proprietor. 
The native methods of fishing are numerous, some of 
them rude, others remarkably ingenious. In the shallow 
parts of the lake they erect singular enclosures of stones 
for taking a number of small and middling-sized fish. 
This enclosure they call a aua ia, a fish fence. 
A circular space, nine or twelve feet in diameter, is 
enclosed with a stone wall, built up from the bottom of 
the lake, to the edge of the water. An opening, a foot 
or two wide, is left in the upper part of the wall, extend ¬ 
ing four or six inches below the surface. From 
each side of this opening, a wall of stone is raised to the 
edge of the water, extending fifty or a hundred yards, 
and diverging from the aperture, so that the wall leaves a 
