After the rough outer surface of the bark has been scraped off with a shell on a board, the remaining fibres are twisted with the mere palm of the hand across the bare thigh into a strong whip-cord, or finer twine, according to the size of the meshes of the net.  As the good lady’s cord lengthens, she fills her netting-needle, and when that is full, works it into her net.  Their wooden netting-needles are exactly the same in form as those in common use in Europe.  One evening, in taking a walk, Mrs. Turner and I stood for a few minutes and looked at a woman working a net.  Mrs. Turner begged to be allowed to do a bit, took the needle, and did a few loops, to the no small amazement of the woman, who wondered how a European lady could know how to handle a Samoan netting-needle, and do Samoan work.

They make nets of all sizes, from the small one of eighteen inches square to the seine of a hundred feet long.  A net forty feet long and twelve feet deep can be had for native mats, or white calico, to the value of twenty shillings.  A hundred men may be able to muster some twenty nets.  These they unite together, and, in the lagoon off their settlement, take large quantities of mullet and other fish.

The pearl-shell fish-hook is another article long in use, and in the manufacture of which the Samoans show some ingenuity.  They cut a strip off the shell, from two to three inches long, and rub it smooth on a stone, so as to resemble a small fish.  On the under side, or what may be called the belly, of this little mock fish, they fasten a hook made of tortoise-shell, or, it may be, nowadays, an English steel one.  Alongside of the hook, concealing its point, and in imitation of the fins of a little fish, they fasten two small white feathers.  Without any bait, this pearl-shell contrivance is cast adrift at the stern of a canoe, with a line of twenty feet, and from its striking resemblance to a little fish it is soon caught at, and in this way the Samoans secure a large quantity of their favourite food.  No European fish-hook has yet superseded this purely native invention.  They bait and use the steel fish-hook, however, and in some cases use it on their pearl-shells, as we have just remarked, instead of the tortoise-shell fish-hook.

A curious native drill is seen in connection with the manufacture of these little shell fish-hooks.  Fine holes are drilled through the shell for the purpose of making fast the hook as well as the line, and the instrument to which we refer answers the purpose admirably.  For the sake of comparison with other parts of the world, this simple contrivance is worth a few lines of description.  Take a piece of wood, eighteen inches long, twice the thickness of a cedar pencil.  Fasten with a strong thread a fine-pointed nail, or a sail-needle, to the end of this sort of spindle.  Get a thick piece of wood, about the size of what is called in England a “hot cross bun,”