It is colored with the juice of berries, laid on with a piece of turtle-shell, shaped like a knife, or with a brush, formed by chewing the end of a slip of bamboo. In this manner it is tinged brown, green, blue, and black; to produce a yellow, the cloth is dipt in a dye prepared by boiling the cone of a tree in water. They often paint a variety of patterns, in which they display great taste and fancy.
This cloth, from its texture, is, when wetted, extremely apt to get damaged, in which state it tears like moist paper; great care, therefore, is always taken to keep it dry, or to have it carefully dried when it is wetted. When they swim off to ships, they hold their clothes out of the water in one hand, occasionally changing it as it becomes fatigued.
The mats with which the floors of the houses are covered, are also manufactured by the women. They are made of rushes, or a kind of broad-leaved grass, split at the stem, and are worked in a variety of patterns.
The natives are most dexterous fishers, and their implements are constructed with much ingenuity. The hooks are sometimes made of mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell, but those procured from ships are coming into more general use.
Their nets and lines are spun from the fibre of a broad-leaved plant called ourana, similar in appearance to sedge or flags; it is pulled green, and the outside stripped off with a tortoise-shell knife, after which it is steeped in water; the fibres are separated by the nail, and spun into lines, by rolling them between the hand and the thigh. The lines have sometimes two strands, and sometimes three, and are much stronger than those of hemp. They drag these lines after their canoes, and in this manner take bonettas, dolphins, and albicores. For the hooks of their own manufacture bait is not required, the mother-of-pearl shank serving the same end. When wire hooks are used, they wrap a piece of white cloth round them.
The nets in which they take the flying fish are made of twine of the same material.—They are about a hundred yards in length, by three or four yards in breadth, and have a large bag in the centre.
They are set like herring-nets, with the upper edge floated by buoys of light wood, whilst the lower edge is kept under water by weights of lead or iron. In order to prevent the fish from flying over, branches of trees are laid all along the head-line. When properly extended, a canoe at each end of the net, gradually advances, forming it into a circle, into which the fish are driven by a number of canoes, who fill up the open side, and beat the surface violently with branches.—When the canoes at each end of the net meet, they gradually take it in, contracting the circle till the fish are forced into the bag in the centre.
In this manner prodigious numbers are taken. I have known them return, after a day’s fishing, with ten or twelve canoes deeply loaded. Sometimes the net is so full they cannot take it on board, and are obliged to drag it after them to the shore.
They have a singular method of catching fish by poison. This is done by means of an herb like heath, stripped of its bark, and bruised; with this they dive to the bottom, and place it beneath the stones, where the fish lie. The poison is so powerful, that in a short time they sicken, and come up to the surface.—When taken they are instantly gutted, in order that the poison in their stomach may not affect the quality of the fish.
The occupiers or proprietors of land are entitled to the privilege of fishing upon their own shores as far as the tallest man in the island can wade at low water, and they may exercise that right at all seasons; but beyond that the sea is tabooed, except at two periods in the year, of six weeks each, during which unlimited fishing is allowed. At these times it is the general employment of the natives, and they cure enough to serve them through the tabooed season.