OF THE SOUTH SEAS 377 



with the Tahitians with the spears, and held a paddle, 

 and that slight occupation gave me time and thought 

 for the scene. The torches threw a lurid glare upon 

 the exaggerated, semi-nude figures of the giant bronzes 

 on the beaks of the pirogues, their arms raised in the 

 poise of the weapon, each outlined against the darkness 

 of the night, glorious avatars yet of their race that had 

 been so mighty and was so soon to pass from the wave. 



"Maru," said the chief, when we sat on the mats at 

 late supper after a return from the lagoon, "it is a pity 

 you were not here when the Tahitians had their ^aria 

 and p«M, our large canoes for navigating on the moana 

 faa aro, the landless sea. The 'ar'ia was a double canoe, 

 each seventy feet long, high in the stern, and lashed to- 

 gether, outrigger to outrigger. A stout, broad plat- 

 form was held firm between the canoes with many lash- 

 ings of sennit, a strong, but yielding, framework on 

 which was a small house of straw where the crew lived. 

 We had no nails, but we used wooden pegs and thou- 

 sands of cocoanut-fiber ropes, so that everything, aloft 

 and alow, was taut, but giving in the toss of the sea. 



"The pahi was eighty feet long, broad in the middle, 

 very carefully and neatly planked over inside, forming 

 a rude bulkhead or inner casing, and had a lofty carved 

 stem rising into one or two posts, terminating in a hu- 

 man form. It was in these vessels that we made the 

 long journeys from island to island, the migrations and 

 the descents upon other Polynesian peoples in war. 

 Both the ^ar'ia and the pahi were propelled by a huge 

 'le, or mat sail of pandanus-leaves shaped like a leg of 

 a fat hog. In modern times these great canoes were 

 built in Bora-Bora, the island the Hawaiians say they 



