The Chief's Turtle Fishers.
THE ROYAL FISH
These fences do not survive tempestuous weather. The waves soon make a breach in them, and the smallest hole
renders them useless. When they are rebuilt it is generally at a different place, and ruined fish-fences may be seen at every inlet along the coast. But this is for another reason; after some months of use the fish appear to know their danger and to avoid the fence. Perhaps their range is very much restricted, and when the fence has caught all the fish in its immediate neighbourhood the sea at that point is depopulated for the time. At Nasova a superior fence was built of wire-netting. Its daily catch for the first few weeks was enormous—on some tides not less than 1500 fish of five pounds' weight and over—but a few weeks later the catch failed quite suddenly, and thereafter the trap was scarcely worth examining.
In the larger rivers the natives build stone fish weirs constructed to lead into a basket trap. A rope bristling with fibre streamers is dragged by men on both banks to frighten the fish down-stream, and the basket is filled.
But these are mere amateur expedients compared with the methods of the fisher tribes. These, as will be explained in another chapter, own no planting lands, but barter their fish for vegetables, or live upon the bounty of the great chiefs for whom they work. Their skill as seamen was unsurpassed, and in the great confederations they manned the big war-canoes.
In Fiji the royal fish is the turtle. Every considerable chief had turtle fishers attached to his establishment. He would allow them to take service with other chiefs for ten expeditions. The hiring chief paid them by results; for blank days they received nothing, but food and property were given to them for every catch, and a considerable present was made to them at the end of their engagement. The turtle men use nets of sinnet from 60 to 200 yards long and 10 feet wide, with meshes 8 inches square. The floats are of light wood 2 feet long and 5 feet apart; the weights pebbles or large shells. A canoe takes the net into deep water, and pays it out in a semicircle with both ends resting on the reef. This intercepts the turtle on his way back from his feeding-grounds in shallow water, and only a perfect knowledge of his habits guides the fishermen to choose the proper time and
place. If the turtle takes fright at the net the men drive him forward by striking the water with poles, and stamping of the canoe deck, and the dipping of a float is the signal that he is entangled. The catch is announced by loud blasts on the conch, and the canoes are received with the same noise of triumph as when they brought back bodies for the cannibal ovens. The women meet them with songs and dances, and sometimes they pelt the crew with oranges and are chased from the beach with loud laughter.
A CRUEL DEATH
The hen turtle is taken when she crawls on shore to lay her eggs, and the nest itself is robbed when eyes are sharp enough to detect the place where she has so cunningly smoothed the sand over it. But in Kandavu the turtle is actually taken in the sea without nets, and this is sport indeed. Two men go out in a light canoe; the one paddles in the stern while the other lies upon his stomach with his head projecting over the bow, and with a heap of pebbles under him. With scarce a ripple from the paddle the canoe is gently propelled to and fro over the bottom where grows the green sea-grass which is the turtle's favourite pasture. The watcher in the bow lifts his hand; the motion is checked; he takes a pebble from the heap beneath him, and drops it gently into the water. Down it goes pat upon the shell of the feeding turtle. Unsuspecting danger, the beast crawls lazily out of range of such accidents and begins to feed again. Steered by hand-signals from the watcher the canoe swings her head over him again, and another stone taps rudely at his shell. It may need a third or even a fourth to convince him that this rain of solid bodies from the upper world is more than accidental, but this unwonted exercise at meal times has bereft him of breath. Air he must have, and he makes slantwise for the surface. Then the sport begins; the watcher snatches off his sulu and plunges down into the depths to meet him. The art lies in seizing him by the edge of the fore-flipper, and in turning him over before he reaches the surface. It is a slippery handhold, but the hand that grasps the limb higher up will be nipped between the flipper and the sharp edge of the shell, and to seize a turtle by the