Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/214

156 The shell is first cut by the edge of another shell into square pieces. These are shaped with files of coral, with which they work in a manner surprising to any one who does not know how sharp corals are. A hole is then bored in the middle by a drill, which is simply any stone that may chance to have a sharp corner in it tied to the handle of a cane. This is turned in the hand like a chocolate mill until the hole is made; the file then comes into the hole and completes the hook. This is made, in such a one as the figure shows, in less than a quarter of an hour.

In their carpentry, joinery, and stone-cutting, etc., they are scarcely more indebted to the use of tools than in making these hooks. A stone axe in the shape of an adze, a chisel or gouge made of a human bone, a file or rasp of coral, the skin of sting-rays and coral sand to polish with, are a sufficient set of tools for building a house and furnishing it with boats, as well as for quarrying and squaring stones for the pavement of anything which may require it in the neighbourhood. Their axes are made of a black stone, not very hard, but tolerably tough: they are of different sizes, some, intended for felling, weigh three or four pounds; others, which are used only for carving, not as many ounces. Whatever quality is lacking in these tools, is made up by the industry of the people who use them. Felling a tree is their greatest labour; a large one requires many hands to assist, and some days before it can be finished, but when once it is down they manage it with far greater dexterity than is credible to a European. If it is to be made into boards they put wedges into it, and drive them with such dexterity (as they have told me, for I never saw it) that they divide it into slabs of three or four inches in thickness, seldom meeting with an accident if the tree is good. These slabs they very soon dubb down with their axes to any given thinness, and in this work they certainly excel; indeed, their tools are better adapted for this than for any other labour. I have seen them dubb off the first rough coat of a plank at least as fast as one of our carpenters could have done it; and in hollowing, where they are able to raise