The Women Sometimes Use The Gig, And Always Carry One
In Each Canoe To Strike Large Fish Which May Be Hooked And Thereby Facilitate
The Capture.
But generally speaking, this instrument is appropriate
to the men, who are never seen fishing with the line, and would indeed
consider it as a degradation of their pre-eminence.
When prevented by tempestuous weather or any other cause, from fishing,
these people suffer severely. They have then no resource but to pick up
shellfish, which may happen to cling to the rocks, and be cast on the beach,
to hunt particular reptiles and small animals, which are scarce, to dig
fern root in the swamps or to gather a few berries, destitute of flavour
and nutrition, which the woods afford. To alleviate the sensation of hunger,
they tie a ligature tightly around the belly, as I have often seen
our soldiers do from the same cause.
Let us, however, suppose them successful in procuring fish. The wife returns
to land with her booty, and the husband quitting the rock joins his stock
to hers; and they repair either to some neighbouring cavern or to their hut.
This last is composed of pieces of bark, very rudely piled together,
in shape as like a soldier's tent as any known image to which I can compare it:
too low to admit the lord of it to stand upright, but long and wide enough
to admit three or four persons to lie under it. "Here shelters himself
a being, born with all those powers which education expands, and all those
sensations which culture refines." With a lighted stick brought from
the canoe they now kindle a small fire at the mouth of the hut and prepare
to dress their meal.
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