Having said thus much of their workmanship, I shall now give some account of their tools; they have adzes, axes, and chissels, which serve them also as augers for the boring of holes: as they have no metal, their adzes and axes are made of a hard black stone, or of a green talc, which is not only hard but tough; and their chissels of human bone, or small fragments of jaspar, which they chip off from a block in sharp angular pieces like a gun-flint. Their axes they value above all that they possess, and never would part with one of them for any thing that we could give: I once offered one of the best axes I had in the ship, besides a number of other things for one of them, but the owner would not sell it; from which I conclude that good ones are scarce among them. Their small tools of jaspar, which are used in finishing their nicest work, they use till they are blunt, and then, as they have no means of sharpening them, throw them away. We had given the people at Tolaga a piece of glass, and in a short time they found means to drill a hole through it, in order to hang it round the neck as an ornament by a thread; and we imagine the tool must have been a piece of this jaspar. How they bring their large tools first to an edge, and sharpen the weapon which they call Patoo-Patoo, we could not certainly learn; but probably it is by bruising the same substance to powder, and, with this, grinding two pieces against each other.

Voyaging Accounts