286 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



The stern sheets terminate diversely, according to the taste of 

 the architect ; a vertical (Plate xv., fig. 3) or horizontal fork, 

 representing, so the natives said, a fish's tail, being popular, and 

 sometimes a turtle's tail is imitated. 



Both fore and aft are movable deckings or hatch covers, each 

 carved in one piece, an inch thick, of the full breadth of the hull, 

 with the top sides of which they are flush, their narrow ends 

 countersunk in the deadwood of the head or stern sheets and 

 their broad ends with a finger at each corner which locks under 

 the gunwale rail. The forward decking, two feet eight inches 

 long, carries at its after end a seat carved in relief, hollowed on 

 the inner side, the outer sides of which, rising in a wedge, present 

 a vertical face two inches high and act as a wash board. The 

 after-decking, three feet long, has a corresponding wash board, 

 enclosing a raised rod-rest, a block three inches high, three wide, 

 and four long, hollowed on the inside to receive a fishing-rod 

 whose butt swings in a grummet slung from the aftermost thwart 

 (Plate xv., fig. 4).* Aft from the wash board along the median 

 line of the decking there is in this individual canoe a row of seven 

 little pyramids, each an inch and a half high. Usually they are 

 more numerous and are sometimes continued along past the deck- 

 ing to the extremity of the stern. There appears to be no use for 

 these, though it has been suggested to me that they might be 

 useful as cleats. Lister saw them festooned with Ovula shells on 

 Fakaafu. I regard them as purely ornamental, and from their 

 association with the terminal fish-tail I further look upon them 

 as a conventional representation of the peculiar dorsal finlets of 

 the bonito. They are remarkable as being the only ornamental 

 wood carving now executed by the Ellice Islanders. 



From the port side of the canoe waist project three outriggers, 

 three feet apart at the hull and slightly spreading outwards. The 

 outrigger butts, one and a half inches square, cross to the starboard 

 side and serve as thwarts in the interval, they are usually sunk 

 in the top sides of port and starboard and firmly lashed thereto. 

 The outriggers are usually entire, but are sometimes made divisible, 

 spliced in a lock-joint and served (Plate xv., fig. 5). The advantage 

 of detaching the outrigger float from the hull occurs when the 

 canoes are beached and rolled over, the separated hull being more 

 manageable. At Funafuti the outriggers are always cut from a 

 straight stick which throws off a branch at an angle of about sixty 

 degrees, such a timber being abundantly supplied by Rhizophora; 

 the main stem is cut off six inches beyond the fork, and the branch 

 is continued for eighteen inches, at which point it rests on the 



* 



* Cook noticed that in Tonga the fishing-rod " rests in a notch of a 

 piece of wood, fixed in the stern of the canoe for that purpose." Cook 

 Last Voyage, i., 1785, p. 396. 



