Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0205
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 205]
201.
Some account of New Zealand
are drawn up with a very gentle motion by which means the fish are insensibly lifted from the bottom in this manner I have seen them take vast numbers of fish & indeed it is a most general way of fishing all over the coast their hooks are but ill made generaly of bone or shell fastned to a peice of wood; indeed they seem to have little occasion for them for with their netts they take fish much easier than they could do with them
[Margin note] tillage
In tillage they excell as people who are themselves to eat the fruit of their industry & have little else to do but to cultivate nescessarily must When we first came to Tegadu their crops were just coverd & had not yet began to sprout the mould was as smooth as in a garden & every root had its small hillock rangd in a regular Quincunx by lines which with the pegs still remaind in the feild we had not an opportunity of seeing them work but once saw their tool which was is a long & narrow stake flatted a little & sharpned, across this went is fixd a peice of stick for the convenience of pressing it down with the foot with this simple tool industry teaches them to turn up large peices of ground of 6 or 7 acres in extent indeed the ground soil is generaly sandy is therefore