In one case an unsuccessful endeavour had been made to fashion a
hook from a piece of plate-glass, obtained, no doubt, from the wreck of
some long-forgotten ship. The fractured disc lying among other relics of
the handicraft spoke for itself.
Not only have many samples of partially-made hooks been found, but also
the tools employed in the process. The sharp-edged fragment of quartz used
to chip away the shell, the anvil of soft slate upon which the shell
rested during the operation, the quartz chisel for chipping the central
hole, the coral terminals, resembling rat-tail files, and the smooth stone
upon which the rough edges of the hook were ground down and finished.
Hooks without barbs and manufactured of such materials as pearl-shell and
tortoiseshell may throw light upon the Homeric quotation "caught fish
with the horn of the ox." In those far-off days, bronze wire rope,
similar in design to the steel rope which is of common use in the
present time, was employed. Ancient Greeks, though they anticipated one
of the necessities of trade nowadays, depended upon fish-hooks
resembling those just being abandoned by the Australian blacks. Fish are
guileless creatures.
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