122 Transactiovs. — Miscellaneous. 



hands carved upon it very neatly and painted red ; they had also high- 

 peaked sterns, wrought in filagree and adorned with feathers, from the top 

 of which depended two long streamers, made of feathers, which almost 

 reached the water. Some of these canoes were between fifty and sixty 

 feet long, and rowed with eighteen paddles by the like number of men, who 

 look the same way they row, striking their paddles into the water with their 

 points downward, at the same time bending their bodies forward, and as it 

 were, driving the waves behind them. They gave us two heivos in their 

 canoes which were very diverting. They beat time with their paddles, and 

 ended all at once with the word epaah, at the same instant striking their 

 paddles on the thwarts, all which afforded a truly comic act. 



" On the 16th we had several fisher canoes come to us, and, after much 

 persuasion, they gave us some fish for cloth and trinkets ; but none of their 

 fish was quite fresh, and some of it stank intolerably. They went away 

 very well satisfied, and then a larger canoe, full of people, came up to us, 

 having their faces shockingly besmeared with some paint. An old man, 

 who sat in the stern, had on a garment of some beast's skin, with long hair, 

 dark brown, and white border, which we would have jjurchased, but they 

 were not willing to part with anything. When the captain threw them a 

 piece of red baize for it, they paddled away immediately, held a conference 

 with the fishers' boats, and then returned to the ship. We had laid a 

 scheme to trepan them,* intending to have thrown a running bow-line 

 about the head of the canoe, and to have hoisted her u^d to the anchor : 

 but just as we had got her a-liead for that purpose, they seized Tupaea's 

 little boy, who was in the main-chains, and made off with him, which 

 prevented the execution of our plan. We fired some muskets and great 

 guns at them, and killed several of them.f The boy soon after disengaged 

 himself from them, jumped into the sea, swam toward the ship, and we 

 lowered a boat down and took him up, while the canoes made to land as 

 fast as possible. 



" In the evening we were over against a ^Doint of land, which, from the 

 circumstance of stealing the boy, we called Cape Kidnappers. On doubling 

 the cape we thought to have met with a snug bay, but were disappointed, 

 the land tending away to a point southwards. Soon after we saw a small 



* Not mentioned in Cook. 

 f I saw in 1843-45, at Waimarama, a village a few miles south of Cape Kidnappers, 

 an aged native, who remembered this incident, and I also obtained from several natives, 

 descendants from and near relatives to the sufferers on that occasion, their account of 

 the affair, received from their forefathers ; live, it appears, were killed, and several 

 wounded. One of_^the poor fellows had received a ball in his knee joint, which could not 

 be extracted, and which made him a helpless cripple during a long life. — (W. C, Journal, 

 MS.) 



