54 PYGMIES AND PAPUANS 



The inside of the canoe is sometimes whitened with 

 lime or sago powder but is otherwise not ornamented. 

 A few feet from the stern, where the bottom begins 

 to slope upwards, a low partition of wood is left form- 

 ing as it were a sort of bulkhead ; the space behind 

 this is filled with sand on which a fire is kept burning. 



Before we came to the country the whole business 

 of canoe-making from the first felling of the tree to 

 the final hollowing out of the inside was done with 

 stone axes and the carving was done with sharpened 

 shells, a labour which it is difficult to realise, so it is 

 not surprising that the natives take very great care 

 of their boats. They never allow water to stand in 

 them for long, and at the end of a storm of rain the 

 first thing they do is to go to the river and bail the 

 water out of their canoes, which they do by scooping 

 it out with the blade of a paddle. They also take good 

 care of the outside and frequently char them with fire 

 to kill the worms, which otherwise quickly destroy 

 wood in brackish water. 



The tree most commonly used for making canoes 

 1^ is Octomeles moluccana, which has a smooth pale trunk 

 devoid of branches for a long way above the ground. 

 When they can do so they choose a tree growing close 

 to the river bank, but this is not always possible and 

 we found a place where a tree for a canoe had been 

 felled fully three hundred yards from the water. The 

 trunk is roughly shaped where it lies and is then hauled 

 with immense toil over logs laid on a rough track to the 

 river ; thence it is towed to the village where the 

 hollowing and shaping is done at leisure. We saw a 



