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350 Essays. 



* 

 tlie iipriglits witli durable supplejacks and vines from tlie forest, looked 

 very formidable and was very strong. All its posts were surmounted witb 

 human figures as large as life, in puris naturalibus, elaborately thougb 

 rougbly carved out of solid wood, with faces in every conceivable or incon- 

 ceivable state of distortion. Inside this was generally a second wooden 

 fence, made like the outer one, but of lighter materials ; within this were 

 excavated earthworks. Sometimes the wooden fences, or some portions of 

 them, were raised on earthworks ; and sometimes they were made to over- 

 hang a cliff or side of a hill, as a chevaux cle frise, presenting a low angle 

 with the horizon. 



14. If there was much to admire in their house architecture and forti- 

 fication building, there was still more in their naval architecture ; bearing 

 in mind (as before) that they did all without the aid of iron or any metal ; 

 their solid and strong double canoes (^waJcaunud) , long since extinct, and 

 scarcely known even by name to the present generation ; their handsome, 

 well-arranged war canoes, of which there are not many, and perhaps not a 

 single first-class one left ; their fishing and voyaging canoes, also with 

 raised sides ; * and their common canoes of several kinds and sizes, formed 

 out of a single tree, and often of great length. A first-class war canoe, with 

 all its many fittings — its hundred paddles, its handsome elaborately carved 

 stem and stern, and all its many ornaments and decorations of feathers, 

 rouge, and mother-of-pearl, was always the work of many hands throughout 

 many years. Fully to complete one was indeed a triumph, in which many 

 hearts would heartily join : so true it is, — 



" A thing of beauty is a joy for ever !" 

 Their largest canoes were rigged with two masts, and carried a large light 

 triangular- shaped sail to each. Their smaller canoes had only one similarly 

 shaped sail. Besides their canoes, they sometimes made use of rafts for 

 crossing streams and inlets when the water was deep ; such, however, were 

 only made for the occasion, of dry bulrushes, or the dry flowering stems of 

 the flax plant, tied together in bundles with green flax. In some places (as 

 about the East Cape, where there are no harbours), the natives made use of 

 an open frame-like raft of light wood, on which they went out to sea for 

 some distance ; and of late years have not unfrequently visited ships on such, 

 carrying with them two or three baskets of potatoes. 



15. They also excelled in some few manufactures, more particularly in 

 their textiles, in this respect far surpassing all the other Polynesians ; 

 nature having bountifully given to them that most useful plant the New 

 Zealand flax, or Phormium, which was very nearly to them what the cocoa- 

 nut palm is to the Indian. 



* Commonly called " war canoes " by the colonists. 



