Another incident made them well-disposed for a season; namely, the use of a fishing-net. Seeing that the Natives had so little food—there being, in fact, a famine after the hurricane—I engaged an inland Tribe to make a net forty feet long and very broad. Strange to say, the Inland people who live far from the sea make the best fishing materials, which again they sell to the Harbour people for the axes, knives, blankets, and other articles obtained from calling vessels. They also make the killing-stones, and trade with them amongst the shore people all round the island. This _kawas_ or killing-stone is made of blue whinstone, eighteen to twenty-four inches long, an inch and a half across, perfectly straight, and hewn as round and neat as any English tradesman could have done it, exactly like a large scythe stone, such as they use on the harvest fields in Scotland. The kawas seems to be peculiar to Tanna, at least I have not seen it on any other island. The Natives, with pieces of very hard heavy wood of the same size and shape, are taught to throw it from infancy at a given mark; in warfare, it is thrown first; where it strikes it stuns or kills, and then they spring forward with their large double-handed heavy club. Every man and boy carries his killing-stone and other weapons, even when moving about peaceably in his own village, war being, in fact, the only regular occupation for men! Well, these same Inland people, the sort of artisans of the island, being mostly the women and the girls, manufactured for me this huge fishing-net. The cord was twisted from the fibre made out of the bark of their own trees, and prepared with immense toil and care; and not without touches of skill and taste, when woven and knotted and intertwined. This net I secured, and lent about three days each to every village all round the Harbour and near it. One night I saw them carrying home a large hog, which they had got from an Inland Chief for a portion of the fish which they had taken. I thought it right to cause them to return the net to the Mission House every Saturday evening, that they might not be tempted to use it on Sabbath. It was a great help to them, and the Harbour yielded them much wholesome food in lieu of what the hurricane had destroyed.