They are also very dexterous in making basket and wickerwork; their baskets are of a thousand different patterns, many of them exceedingly neat; and the making them is an art that every one practises, both men and women: they make occasional baskets and panniers of the cocoa-nut leaf in a few minutes, and the women who visited us early in a morning used to send, as soon as the sun was high, for a few of the leaves, of which they made little bonnets to shade their faces, at so small an expence of time and trouble, that, when the sun was again low in the evening, they used to throw them away. These bonnets, however, did not cover the head, but consisted only of a band that went round it, and a shade that projected from the forehead.

Of the bark of the Poerou they make ropes and lines, from the thickness of an inch to the size of a small packthread: with these they make nets for fishing: of the fibres of the cocoa-nut they make thread, for fastening together the several parts of their canoes, and belts, either round or flat, twisted or plaited; and of the bark of the Erowa, a kind of nettle which grows in the mountains, and is therefore rather scarce, they make the best fishing lines in the world: with these they hold the strongest and most active fish, such as Bonetas and Albicores, which would snap our strongest silk lines in a minute, though they are twice as thick.

Voyaging Accounts