648 EARLY MIGRATION 



of which canoes might be formed, with fire, with stones, and 

 with shells. Considering the abundance of trees once standing 

 in places, perhaps easy of access, whence the hand of man 

 may have long since cleared them away, and the quantity of 

 animal,* as well as vegetable food which may have abounded 

 where then there had been no arch-destroyer, — how easy, 

 comparatively speaking, may it have been, in those early ages, 

 to fell, hollow out, and launch great trunks of trees, which, 

 secured two and two, and covered over, would form excellent 

 vessels. Like the double canoes of modern Polynesians, they 

 might have carried a platform, above the reach of common 

 waves, on which families and their provisions could voyage 

 in security. Neither refined art nor any tool would have been 

 required in the construction : with fire to hollow and to divide, 

 stones, shells, and bones would have sufficed for so simple a 

 work, and thus enabled the least informed savages to make sea- 

 worthy and even burthensome vessels. 



Unlike some modern canoes, however, these primitive ves- 

 sels would have been capable of sailing only before the wind, 

 or nearly so, and would therefore have been almost at the dis- 

 posal of every breeze, when once at sea. Hence, in attempting 

 to follow their course, we must attentively consider prevailing 

 winds, and by no means omit to regard currents, of which the 

 first sailors could have known nothing, and which must have 

 caused the mis-direction, if not loss, of many early adventurers. 



In alluding to easily constructed rafts, and double canoes, I 

 do not for an instant dream of excluding better vessels, which 

 no doubt, were soon constructed after men began to roam by 

 sea ;-f- but I wish to show, so far as I am able, how readily 

 means of transport were accessible to the first wanderers. 



* For proofs of the extraordinarily rapid manner in which animals 

 multiply when comparatively unmolested by man, we need only turn to 

 South America. 



t The Piragua now used at Chiloe, and by the savages of the Chonos 

 Archipelago, exactly resembles in every minute detail the Maseulah 

 boat of Madras. Its ' sacho,' or wooden anchor with a stone in the 

 middle, is precisely like that used in Chinese and Japanese Junks : 

 but doubtless these coincidences may be accidental. 



