both confided o f boards of carved work, of which the defign
was much better than the execution. All their canoes, ex- v—
cept a few at Opoorage or Mercury Bay, which were of one
piece, and hollowed by fire, are built after this plan, and
few are lefs than twenty feet long: fome of the fmaller fort
have outriggers, and fometimes two of them are joined
together, but this is not common. The carving upon
theftern and head ornaments of the inferior boats, which
feern to be intended wholly for filhing, confids of the
figure of a man, with a face as ugly as can be conceived,
and a mondrous tongue thrud out o f the mouth, with
the white Ihells of fea-ears duck in for the eyes. But
-the canoes o f the fuperior kind, which feem to be their men
of war, are magnificently adorned with open work, and covered
with loofe fringes of black feathers, which had a mod
elegant appearance : the gunwale boards were alfo frequently
carved in a grotefque tade, and adorned with tufts
of white feathers placed upon a black ground. Of vifible
objects that are wholly new, no verbal defcription can convey
a jud idea, but in proportion as they referable fome thac
are already known, to which the mind of the reader mud be
referred: the carving of thefe people being of a Angular
kind, and not in the likenefs of any thing that is known on
our fide of the ocean, either “ in the heaven above, or in the
M earth beneath, or in the waters .that are under the earth,
I mud refer wholly to the reprefentations which will be
found of it in Plate XV.
The paddles are frnall, light, and neatly made ; the blade
is of an oval fhape, or rather of a fhape re (enabling a large
leaf, pointed at the bottom, broaded in the middle, and gradually
Idling itfielf in the draft, the whole length being about
fix feet, of which the lhaft or loom including the handle is
H a four,