The spears are very slender, and are made from a species of leptospermum that grows abundantly in swampy places; they are from nine to ten feet long and barbed with a piece of hard wood, fastened on by a ligature of bark gummed over; we saw none that were not barbed, or had not a hole at the end to receive the hooked point of the meara.  Woodcut 4 shows the method by which this weapon is propelled.

The hammer, or kaoit, appears to be used only for the purpose of breaking open shellfish, and killing seals and other animals by striking them on the head; for it has no sharpened edge to be used as a chopping or cutting instrument; the handle is from twelve to fifteen inches long, having one end scraped to a sharp point, and on each side at the other end two pieces of hard stone fixed and cemented by a mass of gum, which, when dry, is almost as hard as the stone itself; the hammer is about one pound weight.  See Woodcut 5.

The knife, or taap, is perhaps the rudest instrument of the sort that ever was made; the handle is about twelve inches long, scraped to a point like the hammer, and has, at the other end, three or four splinters of sharp-edged quartz stuck on in a row with gum, thus forming a sort of ragged instrument.  See Woodcut 6.  It is thus used:  after they have put within their teeth a sufficient mouthful of seal’s flesh, the remainder is held in their left hand, and, with the taap in the other, they saw through, and separate the flesh.* Every native carries one or more of these knives in his belt besides the hammer which is also an indispensable instrument with them.

(Footnote.  A very good idea may be obtained of the manner in which these taaps are used, by referring to Captain Lyon’s drawing of the Esquimaux sledges at page 290 of Parry’s Second Voyage:  the natives of King George’s Sound however hold the knife underhanded, and cut upwards.)

We did not perceive that these people acknowledged any chief or superior among them; the two parties that collected daily on the opposite sides of the harbour evidently belonged to the same tribe for they occasionally mixed with each other.  Their habitations were probably scattered about in different parts for when the natives went away for the night they separated into several groups, not more than three or four going together, and these generally returned in company the next morning by the same path which they had taken when they left us:  they also arrived at different times and some evidently came from a distance greater than others, for they were later in arriving and always took their leave at an earlier hour.