PORTER’S JOURNAL, 
77 
the reviews they appeared greatly to pride themselves on the 
beauty and splendor of their men of war: they are not however so 
fleet as might be expected, as our whale' boats could beat them 
with great ease. 
Their fishing canoes are vessels of a larger and fuller corn 
struction, many of them being six feet in width and of an equal 
depth; they are managed with paddles more resembling an oar, 
and are, in some measure, used as such, but in a perpendicular po* 
sition, the fulcrum resting on the outriggers projecting from each 
side; with those they proceed to the small bays on the coast, where 
they fish with the scoop net, and with the hook and line They 
have also smaller canoes, which are commonly nothing more than 
the hollow keels of the large one$, after the upper works are ta¬ 
ken off; these are furnished with outriggers, and are used for 
fishing about the harbour. The canoes used for the purpose of 
navigating from one island to another, a navigation very common, 
are similar in their construction to the larger kind of fishing ca¬ 
noes, and are secured two together by beams lashed across. These 
are called double canoes, and are furnished with a triangular sail 
made of a matt similar to that generally called a shoulder-of-mut- 
ton sail, but placed in an inverted position, the hypothenuse form¬ 
ing the foot of the sail, to which is secured a boom. These are 
also worked during a calm with paddles, and appear capable of 
resisting the sea for a long time. The canoes formed for the sole 
purpose of going in search of new lands are of a still larger con¬ 
struction, and are rigged in the same manner. They use also oc¬ 
casionally a kind of cattamanaw, which they construct in a few 
minutes, and a kind of surf board, similar to that used by the na¬ 
tives of the Sandwich Islands; these, however, scarcely deserve to 
foe enumerated among their vessels, as they are used chiefly by 
the boys and girls, and are intended solely for paddling about the 
harbour. 
About this time I discovered a conspiracy on foot among my 
prisoners; their object was to possess themselves of the Essex 
Junior, and the plan and method by which they expected to effect 
this object was as follows: 
They had all been permitted to go on shore and on board 
the, different vessels whenever they wished, on a promise of con- 
