378
Augatt a£ainft thefe -weapons, when they attack each other, they
1---.— j have matts folded up many times, which they place under
I4‘ their clothes from the neck to the waift: the weapons them-
felves indeed are capable of much lefs mifchief than thofe of
the fame kind which we faw at the other iflands, for the
lances were there pointed with the fharp bone of the fting-
ray that is called the fling, and tire pikes were: of much-
greater weight. The other things that we faw here were all-
fuperior in their kind to any we had feen before; the cloth was
of a better colour in the dye, and painted with greater neat-
nefs and tafte; the clubs were better cut and polilhed,. and
the canoe, though a fmall one-, was very rich in ornament,
and the carving was executed in a better manner:: among
other decorations peculiar to this canoe, was a line of fmall
white feathers, which hung from the head and ftern on the
outfide, and which,, when we faw them, were thoroughly
wetted by the'fpray.
Tupia told us, that there were feveraf iflands lying at dif-
ferent diftances and in different directions from this, between
the fouth and the north weft; and that at the diftance
of three days-fail to the north eaft, there, wasan illandcalled
Manua, bird-ifland: he feemed, however, moft defirous
that we fhould- fail to the weftward, and defcribed feveral
iflands in that direction which-he faid he had vifited: he told
us that he had been ten or twelve days in going thither, and
thirty in coming back, and that the Pahie in which, he had
made the voyage,, failed much, fafter than the fhip: reckoning
his Pahie therefore to go at the rate of forty leagues a
day, which from my own obfervation I have great reafon to
think thefe boats will do, it- would- make four hundred
leagues in ten days, which, I compute to be the diftance of
Bofcawen and Keppel’s Iflands, difcovered by Captain, Wallis,
weftward
weftward'of Ulietea, and therefore think it very probable that 1769.
they were the iflands he had vifited. The fartheft ifland that •__t— '
he knew any thing of to the fouth ward, he faid, lay at the Mon<Iay ‘4*
diftance of about two days fail from Oteroah, and was called
Moutou ; but he faid that his father had told him there
were iflands to the fouthward of that: upon the whole, I
was determined to ftand fouthward in fearch of a continent,
but to fpend no time in fearching for iflands, if we did not.
happen, to fall in with them during our courfe.
A N