The method of building canoes in these parts is interesting. A log of soft wood is obtained from an up-country tribe in exchange for fish or some other produce, and its outside is shaped by means of an ordinary English axe, while the inside is hewn out with the native stone adzes. These {61} they still prefer for delicate work, though they often attach the head of them to an ordinary axe handle. When a sufficiently deep hollow is made, the native lights a fire in it and works it about until the rough edges are smoothed down and other faults are rectified.

Firing is also used to finish the outside, and if the fire goes out, or anything but a perfect result is finally obtained, they put the cause of it down to some accident, or wrong action which they have done in their youth. Nearly all their calamities are thus explained.

The small canoes when finished often have the outriggers completely boarded over, thus turning them into big rafts, and making them capable of carrying enormous quantities of barter; for it is by boat they carry their goods from village to village along the coast. The Lakatois are always used for long trips, and carry big crews, being often loaded to their full carrying capacity. When leaving Port Moresby for these periodical trips they carry pottery and exchange it for sago and other food.

The pottery industry flourishes at Port Moresby, and at most times it is possible to see the women at work. Men never assist them in this industry; generally very thin old hags seem {62} to superintend all the most difficult part of the work. The clay used for it is, I believe, a natural clay brought down from the interior and exchanged for some other article. Instead of using a pottery wheel, each pot is literally built up from the inside and rounded with a stick or by hand—the sphere getting larger and larger, whilst the inside, towards the top, gets smaller. When finished a fire is lit and stones built up over it, and directly the right heat is obtained, the newly made pot is placed on them and baked.

Nearly all the cooking is done in these contrivances, and they seem capable of standing any heat as well as a good deal of rough usage.

Sago, yams, bananas, sweet potatoes, cocoa-nuts, and fish are the staple foods which the New Guinea natives fatten on. The fish is often smoked and cooked in the earthenware pots or eaten raw. The method of smoking it varies, but generally it is roughly done in a hut.

Owing to the extensive coral reefs all round these islands, fishing by means of nets is a difficult task, and one that does not often pay, as they get torn to pieces on the reefs. Line fishing suffers from the same disadvantage, so that when a big haul of ground fish is wanted a method introduced by the {63} traders is adopted—fishing with dynamite. This sounds somewhat peculiar, but it is most effective.