[Illustration: FALLS ON THE TONGUE RIVER.]
[Illustration: LOANDA CANOE WITH MAT SAILS. [_To face page 101._]
The mat sails used for sea-work are spread by a bamboo sprit. There is a single mast, to the head of which the sail is either hoisted by means of a small line run through the mast, or, more frequently, made fast with a seizing. Such a sail is worked by means of a sheet and a brace on the sprit, usually by one man, whose companion steers by a paddle over the stern; sometimes, however, one man performs both duties. Now and again you will find the luff of the sail bowlined out with another stick. This is most common round Sierra Leone.
The appliances for catching fish are, firstly, fish traps, sometimes made of hollow logs of trees, with one end left open and the other closed. One of these is just dropped alongside the bank, left for a week or so, until a fish family makes a home in it, and then it is removed with a jerk. Then there are fish-baskets made from split palm-stems tied together with tie tie; they are circular and conical, resembling our lobster pots and eel baskets, and they are usually baited with lumps of kank soaked in palm-oil. Then there are drag nets made of pineapple fibre, one edge weighted with stones tied in bunches at intervals; as a rule these run ten to twenty-five feet long, but in some places they are much longer. The longest I ever saw was when out fishing in the lovely harbour of San Paul de Loanda. This was over thirty feet and was weighted with bunches of clam shells, and made of European yarn, as indeed most nets are when this is procurable by the natives, and it was worked by three canoes which were being poled about, as is usual in Loanda Harbour. Then there is the universal hook and line, the hook either of European make or the simple bent pin of our youth.