SEND THE NATIVES A HATCHET. 281 



by the new channel we had got into. At nine 

 o'clock, accordingly, when the ebb tide made, we 

 weighed and went down with it. This channel 

 shortly branched into two of about equal width, one 

 running south, the other south-west. In the latter 

 we saw two very large villages about a mile apart, 

 each containing four or five of these great houses, 

 and a crowd of two or three hundred people. A 

 canoe was suddenly observed abreast of us, under 

 the bank, with twelve men in it, and we saw another 

 with both men and women coming from the direction 

 of Pigville. When the twelve-man canoe had re- 

 connoitred us, she pulled in for the bank, and landed 

 two boys, apparently that they should be out of 

 harm's way, and then gave chase to us. A small 

 fleet of canoes were also putting off from the two 

 villages. As the first canoe neared us, we threw 

 over some bottles to them, but they did not pay any 

 attention to them. We again tried them with 

 Erroob words, and, I think, they understood 

 " toorree" (iron), and answered to us, " nipa" (a 

 knife). We held up hatchets, and again said 

 " toorree," when they, I believe, repeated " nipa," 

 and seemed to apply the word to the hatchet, as if 

 it were a foreign word they had heard, but did not 

 know the exact meaning of. They certainly never 

 used the word " sapara," which is the Erroobian 

 word for hatchet. As we could not induce them to 

 come alongside, we fastened a hatchet to a breaker, 

 and set it adrift. They pulled for it, but seemed 

 cautious of approaching it, and when they did, they 



