under the guidance of their respective masters, seems almost to imply
that the boats themselves are gifted with animal intelligence. At all
events, their performance never fails to excite the highest
professional admiration of those whom experience has rendered familiar
with the difficulties to be overcome.

Long acquaintance with the local tides, winds, currents, and other
circumstances of the pilotage, and the constant pressure of necessity,
enable the inhabitants of each particular spot to acquire such
masterly command over their machinery, that no new-comer, however well
provided, or however skilful generally, can expect to cope with them.
Hence it arises, that boats of a man-of-war are found almost
invariably inferior, in some respects, to those of the port at which
she touches. The effect of seeking to adapt our boats to any one
particular place would be to render them less serviceable upon the
whole. After remaining some time at a place, we might succeed in
occasionally outsailing or outrowing the natives; but what sort of a
figure would our boats cut at the next point to which the ship might
be ordered--say a thousand miles farther from, or nearer to, the
equator, where all the circumstances would be totally different. We
should have to change again and again, losing time at each place, and
probably not gaining, after all, any of the real advantages which the
natives long resident on the spot alone know the art of applying to
practice.

The hull or body of the Ceylonese canoe is formed, like that of
Robinson Crusoe's, out of the trunk of a single tree, wrought in its
middle part into a perfectly smooth cylinder, but slightly flattened
and turned up at both ends, which are made exactly alike. It is
hollowed out in the usual way, but not cut so much open at top as we
see in other canoes, for considerably more than half of the outside
part of the cylinder or barrel is left entire, with only a narrow
slit, eight or ten inches wide, above. If such a vessel were placed in
the water, it would possess very little stability, even when not
loaded with any weight on its upper edges. But there is built upon it
a set of wooden upper works, in the shape of a long trough, extending
from end to end; and the top-heaviness of this addition to the hull
would instantly overturn the vessel, unless some device were applied
to preserve its upright position. This purpose is accomplished by
means of an out-rigger on one side, consis