Some clever ways of catching fish—How the bonito is landed—Native nets—Pig-hunting—The sly opossum and the crocodile.

Lazy as the Solomon islanders are they are excellent sportsmen, and be it man-hunting, pig-hunting, or fishing, it is all the same, they go in for it with a fine relish. Cunning and dexterity play an important part in their methods, and make up for their want of up-to-date appliances.

At fishing they surpass most native races, their ingenuity in this sport being remarkable. Where the white man will fail with all his latest improvements in fishing tackle, these uncultivated men will succeed with quickly improvised and crude materials.

For bonito-fishing they have a remarkable device, and entice these large fish from the deep sea and catch them as easily as an English boy will secure a stickleback. It is one of the most {114} exciting of their sports to watch. A man stands on a rock, for preference, and throws out a line some thirty or forty feet in length, attached to the end of which is a floating bait of some fatty matter; below him and bending double into the water is another native, who works a little piece of bamboo cut off at the joints and having a hollowed-out groove in it. With his thumb in the end of the hollow and his hand gripping the stick he works this backwards and forwards in the water, giving it a peculiar twist, which makes it send forth a weird and uncanny noise. This sound, so they say, is in imitation of the cry of female or male, I forget which, bonito, and so attracts to it a mate.

Whilst one man is steadily working in this manner, the other on the rock is watching every movement of the native with an alertness and excitement which is shown by his tense attitude. Long before the untrained eye has noticed anything peculiar, this fisher has gradually begun to draw in his bait, and soon the great head of the bonito is seen rising out of the water in an endeavour to catch the bait. But the fisher, who by now is in a perfect steam of excitement, adroitly snatches the bait away only just quickly enough to save it. The bonito dives, and the next instant he is up again {115} and after the tempting morsel at full swing. From that moment a most exciting chase begins, and the extraordinary way in which the native gradually entices the great fish to within a few yards of the shore without frightening it, or allowing it to seize the bait, is as fine a performance as one could wish to see.
THE REEF NEAR SIMBO, SOLOMON ISLANDS

All this time the other man is working away at his bonito call. Then suddenly the water is lashed into foam, and the man on the rock is straining every muscle. The fish is hooked, and three or four adroit tugs at the line bring him in to the foot of the rock, where he is pounced on by the two men, speared, and landed. Even then the game is not ended, for a bonito dies hard, and a struggle of no mean order is sometimes gone through before the natives have conquered.

To see two black figures struggling with a fish nearly as big as themselves is an extraordinary sight, and is perhaps the most exciting part of the sport. More than one native has been injured in the last act, but that only adds to their keenness to conquer, for they have unlimited courage, as every one who has lived amongst them knows—except, I may add, when superstition plays a part, then they are the most abject cowards. {116}

Kite-fishing, though less exciting, is another popular form of fishing and is conducted in the following manner. A large kite is sailed behind a canoe, and attached to the tail of the kite is a line with a bait which just touches the water. The gentle bobbing of the kite makes the bait jump on the surface, in the same way that an ordinary angler makes his fly play on the water. This is supposed to suggest the presence of a small fish, and the kite is there to represent a bird hovering over it. In this way large fish are attracted and caught.

Ordinary line and hook fishing is also used, and the hooks are beautifully made, sometimes of mother-of-pearl and sometimes of turtle shell.

On a moonlight night a party of natives will go out in their canoes to fish for the makasi, a large fish which feeds round the mouth of rivers and lagoons. This is a somewhat dangerous sport, owing to the captive fish occasionally being attacked by a shark just as it is being landed, which sometimes results in the canoe being upset, and its occupants, the fish, and the shark all getting mixed up. Such an excitement and noise is caused by the yelling fishermen that the shark is often frightened, and clears off without even tasting either the fish or the fishers.
NATIVE ARCHER SHOOTING FISH, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS
{117}

The most ingenious devices in the way of nets are used in different parts of the island. Some are even made of a tough spider’s web; whilst others are almost the same in construction as the English net and, strange to say, are knotted in a similar manner. The hand-net varies in length to about eighteen inches and is made on different kinds of wood, often bamboo. The mesh is small, and the handle is, as a rule, most elaborately carved with representations of sharks, frigate birds, etc., and is made of wood. For ordinary purposes a two and a half inch mesh is used, but a six inch is used on the larger nets for big fish.

A party of natives will often be seen carrying peculiar flat hand-nets made of light bamboo, with an arched top, varying in length to some eighteen feet. Armed with these queer-shaped things they wade out into the shallow water, where they know a shoal of fish is at play, and by pushing their nets before them they form a circle round the shoal and thus have it at their mercy. They are wonderfully sharp in knowing when a school of fish is about, and they show a surprising amount of energy in capturing it.

Dynamite is now frequently used by the natives here as in New Guinea, as they have learned from {118} the traders that it is an easy method of obtaining big hauls, and anything that saves them labour they immediately adopt, as long as it does not interfere with their old customs.

There is another form of fishing which is pretty general all round the coasts of the different islands. Bèche-de-mer, or the Malayan trepang. It is a curious-looking thing like a piece of india-rubber, very tough and flexible, and is found on coral reefs. It has no eyes, nor does it seem to possess any means of getting about. In length it varies from six to twelve inches and is between two and three inches thick.

The natives gather them off the rocks or catch them in very low water; and immediately after they have got a basket full they clean and dry them, and then boil them for about a quarter of an hour. Some are cut ............