es against the shoulder, with a sudden jerk,
the lance flies forward with incredible swiftness, and with so good an
aim, that at the distance of fifty yards these Indians were more sure of
their mark than we could be with a single bullet. Besides these lances,
we saw no offensive weapon upon this coast, except when we took our last
view of it with our glasses, and then we thought we saw a man with a bow
and arrows, in which it is possible we might be mistaken. We saw,
however, at Botany Bay, a shield or target of an oblong shape, about
three feet long, and eighteen inches broad, which was made of the bark
of a tree: This was fetched out of a hut by one of the men that opposed
our landing, who, when he ran away, left it behind him, and upon taking
it up, we found that it had been pierced through with a single pointed
lance near the center. These shields are certainly in frequent use among
the people here; for though this was the only one that we saw in their
possession, we frequently found trees from which they appeared
manifestly to have been cut, the marks being easily distinguished from
those that were made by cutting buckets: Sometimes also we found the
shields cut out, but not yet taken off from the tree, the edges of the
bark only being a little raised by wedges, so that these people appear
to have discovered that the bark of a tree becomes thicker and stronger
by being suffered to remain upon the trunk after it has been cut round.

The canoes of New Holland are as mean and rude as the houses. Those on
the southern part of the coast are nothing more than a piece of bark,
about twelve feet long, tied together at the ends, and kept open in the
middle by small bows of wood: Yet in a vessel of this construction we
once saw three people. In shallow water they are set forward by a pole,
and in deeper by paddles, about eighteen inches long, one of which the
boatman holds in each hand; mean as they are, they have many
conveniencies; they draw but little water, and they are very light, so
that they go upon mud banks to pick up shell-fish, the most important
use to which they can be applied, better perhaps than vessels of any
other construction. We observed, that in the middle of these canoes
there was a heap of sea-weed, and upon that a small fire; probably that
the fish may be broiled and eaten the moment it is caught.

The canoes that we saw when we advanced farther to the northward, are
not made of bark, but of the trunk