CrHaprer XXX 
TRAVEL BY BOATS, RAFTS, ETC. 
“Dugouts”: Canoes, corials, faleas (792); manufacture (793); materials 
(794) ; cover and fittings (795) ; calking (796) ; sails (797). 
“ Wood-skins ” (798). 
Paddles, poles (799). 
Hauling over logs (S800) ; over falls, rapids (801). 
Rafts (802). 
Taboos when traveling (802 A). 
792. The various craft used in the navigation of the creeks, rivers, 
and coast line of the Guianas, together with the adjacent sea, may 
be shortly described as dugouts, wood-skins, and rafts. 
The dugout is a narrow kind of boat made from a single trunk 
of a tree. In the language of the island Carib, the larger of these 
boats were called canaoas or canoas, the Spaniards speaking of them 
as piraguas (G, 1, 116; Cr, 203), the latter term being long retained 
by the English for this kind of Indian boats as the pirogue. The 
same islanders spoke of the smaller boats as couliala (RO, 579), 
whence the corial of our own colony. The old Creole word in Ca- 
yenne was couillara (PBA, 128). In the same way that we speak 
of the native Indians as bucks and buckeens (names given them 
originally by the Dutch), we often hear their dugouts described as 
“buck shells.” The present-day corial (pl. 177 D) is pointed at both 
stem and stern, variations in width, depth, and angle of the slope 
being observable in different areas. On occasion, bow and stern are 
almost indistinguishable, but according to Barrére’s illustration 
from Cayenne (PBA, 28) a couple of centuries ago, the stern was 
markedly rounded (pl. 178C). The term canoe (pl. 178 A, B) in 
our own colony is mostly employed to denote the larger craft, which 
are without the pointed head and stern, the gaps being filled with 
more or less triangular timbers (warakapa, Makusi), on the outer 
sides of which various fantastic devices used formerly to be painted. 
In addition to the patterns painted on the bow and stern, e. g., sun, 
moon, diamond (BrB, 39), the whole of the canoe might be be- 
smeared with annatto (St, 1,400). Such canoes have been met from 
one extreme of the Guianas to the other; from the Mitoua on the 
Guaviar River of the upper Orinoco (Cr, 508) to the Carib of the 
Antilles. Gumilla records also how, in the windy season, to prevent 
611 
