d. It was not the season for roots, but we had plenty of fish, most
of which, however, we purchased of the natives, for we could catch very
little ourselves either with net or line. When we shewed the natives our
seine, which is such as the king's ships are generally furnished with,
they laughed at it, and in triumph produced their own, which was indeed
of an enormous size, and made of a kind of grass, which is very strong:
It was five fathom deep, and by the room it took up, it could not be
less than three or four hundred fathom long. Fishing seems indeed to be
the chief business of life in this part of the country; we saw about all
their towns a great number of nets, laid in heaps like hay-cocks, and
covered with a thatch to keep them from the weather, and we scarcely
entered a house where some of the people were not employed in making
them. The fish we procured here were sharks, stingrays, sea-bream,
mullet, mackrel, and some others.

The inhabitants in this bay are far more numerous than in any other part
of the country that we had before visited; it did not appear to us that
they were united under one head, and though their towns were fortified,
they seemed to live together in perfect amity.

It is high water in this bay at the full and change of the moon, about
eight o'clock, and the tide then rises from six to eight feet
perpendicularly. It appears from such observations as I was able to make
of the tides upon the sea-coast, that the flood comes from the
southward; and I have reason to think that there is a current which
comes from the westward, and sets along the shore to the S.E. or S.S.E.
as the land happens to lie. [66]

[Footnote 66: Some sketches of the Bay of Islands, and a good deal of
valuable information about it, are given by Mr Savage in his Account of
New Zealand, to which we shall be indebted hereafter.--E.]

SECTION XXV.

_Range from the Bay of Islands round North Cape to Queen Charlotte's
Sound; and a Description of that Part of the Coast_.

On Thursday the 7th of December, at noon, Cape Bret bore S.S.E. 1/2 E.
distant ten miles, and our latitude, by observation, was 34 deg. 59' S.;
soon after we made several observations of the sun and moon, the result
of which made our longitude 185 deg. 36' W. The wind being against us, we
had made but little way. In the afternoon, we stood in shore, and
fetched close under the Cavalles, from which islands the main trends W.
by N.: Several canoes put