Page 140

Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places

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South Sea Islands (continued) In every expedient for taking fish they are vastly ingenious. Their Seines, netts for fish to mesh themselves in &c. are exactly like ours: they strike fish with harpoons made of Cane and pointed with hard wood in a more dextrous manner than we can do with ours that are headed with Iron, for we who fasten lines to ours need only lodge them in the fish to secure it, while they on the other hand throwing theirs quite from them must either mortaly wound the fish or loose him. Their hooks indeed as they are not made of Iron must be very different from ours in construction. They [are] of two sorts, first that calld by them Witte witte which is usd for towing, of which fig 1 is the profile and fig 2 the view of the Voyaging Accounts © Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 385, February 2004 Published by kind permission of the Library To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-140.html