Page:Voyages in the Northern Pacific - 1896.djvu/142

114 minutes, all the fish within a certain distance, sicken and come to the surface of the water, and are easily taken. The natives immediately gut them. Whether the fish eat this heath or not I could never learn, but certainly it is a most powerful poison.

On moon light nights, the natives collect on the plain to the number of many hundreds, men, women, and children; here they sit in a ring, where they dance, sing, and play all manner of games, and seldom break up before midnight. On these islands they have much rain in the months of November, December, January, and February, and sometimes it blows heavy gales, equal to the West India hurricanes, from the S. W. These commonly prevail in January, and, during the remainder of the year, the trade-wind blows steady from N. to N. E. sometimes very strong. The hard gales from the S. W. the natives call momotoo (mumuku); previous to the gale, the sea sets in heavily from the S. W. with dark gloomy weather, the mountains are covered with dense clouds, and the tempest is preceded by a dead calm for one or two days, during which time the canoes are not allowed to go on the water. The gale very often blows down the houses, tears tree up by the roots, and does much mischief by overflowing the fish-ponds at the water side, by which means the fish escape. At Woahoo the tide flows 30 minutes past four, full and change, rising about seven feet.

In my tour with Mr. Manning (Manini), we visited the ruin of a large stone house, or fort,