50 cook's first voyage march, 



Opoorage or Mercury Bay, which were of one 

 piece, and hollowed by fire, are built after this plan, 

 and few are less than twenty feet long : some of the 

 smaller sort have outriggers, and sometimes two of 

 them are joined together, but this is not common. 

 The carving upon the stern and head ornaments of 

 the inferior boats, which seemed to be intended 

 wholly for fishing, consists of the figure of a man, 

 with a face as ugly as can be conceived, and a 

 monstrous tongue thrust out of the mouth, with 

 the w r hite shells of sea-ears stuck in for the eyes. 

 But the canoes of the superior kind, which seem to 

 be their men-of-war, are magnificently adorned with 

 open work, and covered with loose fringes of black 

 feathers, which had a most elegant appearance : the 

 gunwale boards were also frequently carved in a 

 grotesque taste, and adorned with tufts of white 

 feathers placed upon a black ground. Of visible 

 objects that are wholly new, no verbal description 

 can convey a just idea, but in proportion as they 

 resemble some that are already known, to which the 

 mind of the reader must be referred : the carving of 

 these people being of a singular kind, and not in the 

 likeness of any thing that is known on our side of 

 the ocean, either " in the heaven above, or in the 

 earth beneath, or in the waters that are under the 

 earth," I must refer wholly to the representations 

 which will be found of it in Plate XV. 



The paddles are small, light, and neatly made ; the 

 blade is of an oval shape, or rather of a shape re- 

 sembling a large leaf, pointed at the bottom, broad- 

 est in the middle, and gradually losing itself in the 

 shaft, the whole length being about six feet, of which 

 the shaft or loom including the handle is four, and 

 the blade two. By the help of these oars they push 

 on their boats with amazing velocity. 



In sailing they are not expert, having no art of 

 going otherwise than before the wind : the sail is 

 of netting or matt, which is set up between two 



