The more you pull, the worse for your skin and
clothes; but with tact you may become free, with naught but neat
scratches and regular rows of splinters. The points of the hooks to
which you have been attached anchor themselves deep in the skin, and
tear their way out and rip and rend your clothes, and your condition of
mind, body and estate, is all for the worse.
But the uses of the lawyer cane are many and various. Blacks employ it
as ropes, as stays for canoes, and, split into narrow threads and woven,
for baskets and fish-traps; and white men find it handy for all sorts of
purposes, from boat-painters and fenders to stock-whip and maul-handles.
Suppose a tree that a black wishes to climb presents difficulties low
down, he will procure a length of lawyer cane, partly biting and partly
breaking it off, if he lacks a cutting implement. Then he will make a
loop, so bruising and chewing the end that it becomes flexible and ties
almost as readily and quite as securely as rope. Ascending a
neighbouring tree, he will manoeuvre one end over a limb of that which
he wishes to climb, and slip it through the loop, and run it up until it
is fast. A cane 50 feet long, no thicker than one's little finger,
fastened to the upper branch of a tree, has on trial borne the weight of
three fairly-sized men.
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