CANOES OP TORRES STRAIT. 15 



over the lads return to their parents, decorated with 

 a profusion of ornaments which are worn until they 

 drop off^ and wearing- in front a small triang-ular 

 piece of shell as a distinguishing' mark. 



The same kind of canoe which is found through- 

 out Torres Strait has heen seen to extend from Cape 

 York along the eastern coast as far south as Fitzroy 

 Island,* a distance of 600 miles. It essentially 

 consists of a hoUowed-out log', a central platform, 

 and an outrigger on each side. The largest canoes 

 which I have seen are those of the Mxu-ray and 

 Darnley Islanders, occasionally as much as sixty 

 feet long ; those of the Australians are small, vary- 

 ing at Cape York between fifteen and thirty feet in 



* At the latter place we found a small canoe with two out- 

 riggers concealed on shore among some bushes. The bark canoes 

 of Rockingham Bay have already been described. About Whit- 

 sunday Passage the canoes, also of bark, are larger and of neater 

 construction : one which I examined at the Cumberland Isles was 

 made of three pieces of bark neatly sewn together ; it was six feet 

 long and two and a half feet wide, sharp at each end, with a 

 wooden thwart near the stem and stern, and a cord amidships to 

 keep the sides from stretching. In the creeks and bays of the 

 now settled districts of New South Wales another kind of canoe 

 was once in general use. At Broken Bay, in August, 1847. a 

 singular couple of aborigines whom I met upon a fishing excur- 

 sion had a small canoe formed of a single sheet of bark tied up 

 at each end ; on the floor of this they were squatted, with the 

 gunwale not more than six inches above the water's edge. Yet 

 this frail bark contained a fire, numbers of spears, fishing lines 

 and other gear. The woman was a character well known in Syd- 

 ney — Old Gooseberry — said to be old enough to have remembered 

 Cook's first visit to these shores. 



