POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 169 
was kept in these houses. Here the prayers were 
frequently preferred^ and the sacrifices offered. 
Their war canoes were generally strong, well built, 
and highly ornamented. They formerly possessed 
large and magnificent fleets of these, and other 
large canoes; and, at their general public meetings, or 
festivals, no small portion of the entertainment was 
derived from the regattas, or naval reviews, in which 
the whole fleet, ornamented with carved images, and 
decorated with flags and streamers, of various native 
coloured cloth, went through the different tactics with 
great precision. On these occasions the crews by which 
they were navigated, anxious to gain the plaudits of 
the king and chiefs, emulated each other in the exhibit 
tion of their seamanship. The vaatii, or sacred canoes, 
formed part of every fleet, and were generally the most 
imposing in appearance, and attractive in their decora¬ 
tions. 
The peculiar and almost classical shape of the large 
Tahitian canoes, the; elevated prow and stern, the rude 
figures, carving, and other ornaments, the loose folding 
drapery of the natives on board, and the maritime aspect 
of their general places of abode, are all adapted to pro¬ 
duce a singular effect on the mind of the beholder. I 
have often thought, when I have seen a fleet of thirty 
or forty approaching the shore, that they exhibited no 
faint representation of the ships in which the Argonauts 
sailed, or the vessels that conveyed the heroes of Homer 
to the siege of Troy. 
Every canoe, of any size, had a distinct name, 
always arbitrary, but frequently descriptive of some 
real or imaginary excellence in the canoe, or in memory 
of some event connected with it. Neither the names 
z 
