1770. ROUND THE WORLD. 221 



against the shoulder, with a sudden jerk, the lance 

 flies forward with incredible swiftness, and with so 

 good an aim, that at the distance of fifty yards these 

 Indians were more sure of their mark than we could 

 be with a single bullet. Besides these lances, we 

 saw no offensive weapon upon this coast, except 

 when we took our last view of it with our glasses, 

 and then we thought we saw a man with a bow and 

 arrows, in which it is possible we might be mistaken. 

 We saw, however, at Botany Bay, a shield or target 

 of an oblong shape, about three feet long, and 

 eighteen inches broad, which was made of the bark 

 of a tree : this was fetched out of a hut by one of 

 the men that opposed our landing, who, when he 

 ran away, left it behind him, and upon taking it up, 

 we found that it had been pierced through with a 

 single pointed lance near the centre. These shields 

 are certainly in frequent use among the people here ; 

 for though this was the only one that we saw in their 

 possession, we frequently found trees from which 

 they appeared manifestly to have been cut, the 

 marks being easily distinguished from those that 

 were made by cutting buckets : sometimes also we 

 found the shields cut out, but not yet taken off from 

 the tree, the edges of the bark only being a little 

 raised by wedges, so that these people appear to 

 have discovered that the bark of a tree becomes 

 thicker and stronger by being suffered to remain 

 upon the trunk after it has been cut round. 



The canoes of New Holland are as mean and rude 

 as the houses. Those on the southern part of the 

 coast are nothing more than a piece of bark, about 

 twelve feet long, tied together at the ends, and 

 kept open in the middle by small bows of wood : 

 yet in a vessel of this construction we once saw three 

 people. In shallow water they are set forward by 

 a pole, and in deeper by paddles, about eighteen 

 inches long, one of which the boatman holds in each 

 hand ; mean as they are, they have many conveni- 



