they do every thing else that is plaited, with amazing facility and
dispatch.

They are also very dexterous in making basket and wicker-work; 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.

They make also a kind of seine, of a coarse broad grass, the blades of
which are like flags; these they twist and tie together in a loose
manner, till the net, which is about as wide as a large sack, is from
sixty to eighty fathoms long; this they haul in shoal smooth water, and