used by them was made out of the bone of the human forearm. Their
substitute for a knife was a shell, or a bit of flint or jasper.
A shark's tooth, fixed to a piece of wood, served for an auger;
a piece of coral for a file; and the skin of a sting-ray for a
polisher. Their saw was made of jagged fishes' teeth fixed on the
convex edge of a piece of hard wood. Their weapons were of a
similarly rude description; their clubs and axes were headed with
stone, and their lances and arrows were tipped with flint. Fire was
another agency employed by them, usually in boat-building. Thus, the
New Zealanders, whose tools were also of stone, wood, or bone, made
their boats of the trunks of trees hollowed out by fire.

The stone implements were fashioned, Captain Cook says, by rubbing
one stone upon another until brought to the required shape; but,
after all, they were found very inefficient for their purpose. They
soon became blunted and useless; and the laborious process of making
new tools had to be begun again. The delight of the islanders at
being put in possession of a material which was capable of taking a
comparatively sharp edge and keeping it, may therefore readily be
imagined; and hence the remarkable incidents to which we have
referred in the experience of the early voyagers. In the minds of the
natives, iron became the representative of power, efficiency, and
wealth; and they were ready almost to fall down and worship their new
tools, esteeming the axe as a deity, offering sacrifices to the saw,
and holding the knife in especial veneration.

In the infancy of all nations the same difficulties must have been
experienced for want of tools, before the arts of smelting and
working in metals had become known; and it is not improbable that the
Phoenician navigators who first frequented our coasts found the same