■ Best. — Maori Voyagers and their Vessels, 449 



This form of vessel needs no outrigger, the second canoe taking the place 

 of that attachment. Ethnographers have derived both the double canoe 

 and the outrigger from the primitive log raft. 



Early European voyagers found the double canoe in use throughout 

 Polvnesia. They were specially numerous at Tahiti, where, in 1774, as 

 related hy Forster, 159 large double canoes, from 50 ft. to 90 ft. in length, 

 were seen ranged in order ofi shore. These were war-canoes, with large 

 platforms and fighting-,stages. In addition were seventy smaller double 

 canoes, each with a roof or cabin at the stern. The smallest district of 

 Tahiti at that time possessed forty of the larger vessels. 



In New Zealand all canoes seen by Tasman seem to have been double 

 craft. Cook saw a number of such canoes on South Island coasts, bat men- 

 tions only one in the North, seen in the Bay of Plenty. Our information 

 concerning these vessels is meagre in the extreme, for no one of the early 

 writers has left us any detailed description thereof, and the illustration 

 given in Tasman's voyage is too grotesque to be taken seriously. The 

 two canoes are said to have been connected by cross-spars, with from 

 1 ft. to 2| ft. of space between the hulls, with a central platform. In the 

 North Auckland district two forms seem to have been used. The waka 

 hourua consisted of two vessels secured together side by side with cross- 

 beams, while in the mahanga type the two canoes were about 30 in. apart. 

 The cross-beams were the most important feature in a double canoe ; should 

 these give way at sea in rough weather, disaster followed. Double canoes 

 were employed on South Island coasts as late as the " thirties " of last 

 century, long after their disuse in the North. As to the outrigger canoe. 

 Cook does not seem to have seen one until he reached Queen Charlotte 

 Soimd. 



The pahi of the Cook Group was a large double canoe furnished with 

 masts and sails. This name was applied by the Moriori, or Mouriuri, folk of 

 the Chatham Isles to a singular double-keeled vessel of a most uncommon 

 type, between canoe and raft, constructed of timber and flax-stalks, and 

 rendered buoyant with dried and reinflated bull-kelp. Curiously enough, 

 these folk worked paddles as we do oars, using a thole-pin. Lack of timber 

 led to the use of some very extraordinary craft among the Moriori, and 

 efiectually prevented any voyages to New Zealand- 



The big double canoes of Paumotu, Samoan, and Fijian types did not 

 go about in tacking, but the sheet of the sail was shifted from one end to the 

 vessel to the other. In his single seagoing canoe the Maori of New Zealand 

 employed two or four steersmen, but the big double canoe of Tahiti called 

 for eight steersmen. 



The double canoe, like the outrigger, can be traced across the Pacific 

 from New Zealand to the Hawaiian Isles, and from eastern Polynesia to 

 India. It was employed by Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Indo- 

 nesians, and in northern Australia, Ceylon, Eurmah, and India. There are 

 two forms of this vessel — one in which the two canoes are of equal size, 

 another in which one is much smaller than the other. The big double sea- 

 going canoe of the Samoans, long discarded, was of the latter type ; the 

 larger of the two being, in some cases, as much as 150 ft. in length. This 

 was the style of vessel in which the natives of the Samoan and Cook Groups 

 made their deep-sea voyages. 



Cook reckoned that Polynesian canoes might sail forty leagues a day or 

 more. Given favourable conditions, this would apparently be a moderate 

 estimate. Morrell, a Pacific voyager of the early part of the nineteenth 



1.5 — Trans. 



