Navigation of New Zealand. 33' 
inch and an half thick, and well fattened together with ttrong 
plaiting : each fide confifted of one entire plank, fixty-three 
feet long, ten or twelve inches broad, and about an inch and 
a quarter thick, and thefe were fitted and lafhed to the bot- 
tom part with great dexterity and ftrength. A confiderable 
number of thwarts were laid from gunwale to gunwale, to 
which they were fecurely lafhed on each fide, as a ftrenthening 
to the boat. The ornament at the head projedted five or fix 
feet beyond the body, and was about four feet and an half 
high ; the ornament at the ftern w'as fixed upon that end, as 
the ftern-poft of a fhip is upon her keel, and was about four- 
teen feet high, two feet broad, and an inch and and half thick. 
They both confifted of boards of carved work: of which the 
dettgn was much better than the execution. All their canoes, 
except a few at Opoorage or Mercury Bay, which were of one 
piece, and hollowed by fire, are built after this plan, and few 
are lefs than twenty feet long : fome of the frnaller fort have 
outriggers, and fometimes two of them are joined together, 
but this is not common. The carving upon the ftern and head 
ornaments of the inferior boats, which feem to be intended 
wholly for fifhing, confifts 'of the figure of a man, with a face 
as ugly as can be conceived, and a mOnftrous tongue tliruft out 
of the mouth, with the white fliells of fea ears ftuck in for the 
eyes. But the canoes of the fuperior kind, which feein to be 
their men of war, are magnificently adorned with open work, 
and covered with loofe fringes of black feathers, which had a 
mOft elegant appearance -. the gunwale boards were alfo fre- 
quently carved in a grotefque tafte, and adorned with tufts oF 
white feathers, placed upon a black ground. Of vifible ob- 
jects that are wholly new, no verbal defcription can convey a 
juft idea, but in proportion as they refemble fome that are al- 
ready known, to which the mirrd of the reader muft be re- 
ferred : the carving of thefe people are of a Angular kind, 
and not in the likenefs of any thing that is known on our 
fide of the ocean, ,c either in the heaven above, or in the 
“ earth beneath, or in the waters that are under the earth.” 
The paddles are fmall, light, and neatly made ; the blade 
of it is of an oval fnape, or rather of a fhape refembling a large 
leaf^ pointed at the bottom, broadeft in the middle, and gra- 
dually loofing itfelf in the fhaft, the whole length being about 
fix feet, of which the fhaft or loom, including the handle, is 
four, and the blade two. By the ffelp of thefe oars they pufh 
on their boats with amazing velocity. 
In failing they are not expert, having no art of going other- 
wife than before the wind : the fail is of netting or matt, which 
is fet up between two poles that are fixed upright upon each 
gunwale, and ferve both for mills and yards : two ropes an- 
l'wered the purpofe of flieets, and were confequently fattened 
above 
