SANTA CBUZ ISLANDS, 245 



get sight of a single inhabitant, but hickily it did not turn 

 out so. 



More than a himdred canoes, with a couple of men in 

 each, swarmed round the ' Cura^oa,' bringing all sorts of 

 articles for barter with our crew ; there were bows, arrows, 

 four-sided clubs, painted, fringed, and running up to a point 

 curved up at the end, pretty mats of fine texture, little 

 neat and well ornamented bags, containing small gourds 

 filled with chinam ; also poultry, yams, bananas, and cocoa- 

 nuts. The swell was so great, tliat several of the canoes 

 capsized alongside, as it were for our amusement, such 

 accidents being of no consequence to these fellows, who 

 swim like fish. I saw one of them dive down and recover 

 a string of blue beads, very nnich the colour of the sea. 



Their canoes are well made, and with outriggers which 

 differ in their fixings from any thing we had yet seen. 

 There was a kind of wicker platform, which went across 

 the canoe in the centre between the poles of the outriggers. 

 The opening on the top of the canoes was so very narrow, 

 they could barely get a leg into the opening, and therefore 

 sat on the top, one leg before the other. 



These savages seem muscular and well made, and have 

 short woolly hair, which they dye yellow with chinam. 

 Their mouths are large, and their teeth are all black from 

 the effect of betel nut, which they chew incessantly ; for 

 clothing they have only a maro made probably of bark or 

 tapa, and a girdle very tight roimd their waist, sometimes of 

 tortoise-shell in narrow bands. All had attached to their 



