eople run a-breast of them along
the shore. They generally rowed to the outward point of a reef which
lay about four miles to the westward of us, where they stayed about an
hour, and then returned. These processions, however, are never made but
in fine weather, and all the people on board are dressed; though in the
other canoes they have only a piece of cloth wrapped round their middle.
Those who rowed and steered were dressed in white; those who sat upon
the awning and under it in white and red, and two men who were mounted
on the prow of each vessel were dressed in red only. We sometimes went
out to observe them in our boats, and though we were never nearer than a
mile, we saw them with our glasses as distinctly us if we had been upon
the spot.

The plank of which these vessels are constructed, is made by splitting a
tree, with the grain, into as many thin pieces us they can. They first
fell the tree with a kind of hatchet, or adze, made of a tough greenish
kind of stone, very dexterously fitted into a handle; it is then cut
into such lengths as are required for the plank, one end of which is
heated till it begins to crack, and then with wedges of hard wood they
split it down: Some of these planks are two feet broad, and from fifteen
to twenty feet long. The sides are smoothed with adzes of the same
materials and construction, but of a smaller size. Six or eight men are
sometimes at work upon the same plank together, and, as their tools
presently lose their edge, every man has by him a cocoa-nut shell filled
with water, and a flat stone, with which he sharpens his adze almost
every minute. These planks are generally brought to the thickness of
about an inch, and are afterwards fitted to the boat with the same
exactness that would be expected from an expert joiner. To fasten these
planks together, holes are bored with a piece of bone that is fixed into
a slick for that purpose, a use to which our nails were afterwards
applied with great advantage, and through these holes a kind of plaited
cordage is passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together: The seams
are caulked with dried rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel is
paid with a gummy juice, which some of their trees produce in great
plenty, and which is a very good succedaneum for pitch.

The wood which they use for their large canoes, is that of the
apple-tree, which grows very tall and straight. Several of them that
were measured, were near eight feet i