If you can imagine a cloudless sky of a deep blue colour, a sea so smooth that not a ripple is visible, and so clear that you can look down into it and see the dark rocks and the sandy bottom and strangely shaped fish swimming idly about amongst bushes of seaweed, which wave and curl with the ebb of the tide; and floating masses of jelly which occasionally double themselves into balls and then become floating masses again. If you can picture all this you will have an idea how clear the waters of the South Seas are when the sky is cloudless. The hot sun is overhead, and the still air is full of a sweet fragrance. Just above you you will see a frigate bird sailing lazily about, and by the sea shore just a faint ripple and a line of white show {58} you quaint and picturesque canoes—not the ordinary mere dug-out things which are so narrow in body that there is only room for a medium-sized man to sit, but long curiously shaped ones with poles stretching across and extended far out over the side; they are slightly arched, and at the end there is a log which rests in the water and lies parallel to the boat.
These outriggers are queer constructions, but no sea can upset a boat possessing them, and with the light shining full on the bright skins of their half-naked occupants, they look still more eccentric. To see a dozen of these queer craft being swiftly paddled through the water by men with bushy heads and fine massive bodies, and women more nude than dressed, but with their hair cropped close to their skulls, is not a sight to be seen everywhere, and well repays all the thousand little disadvantages that journeying to these parts entails.
LARGE TRADING CANOES, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
There is a safety in an outrigger canoe that one cannot feel in ordinary native boats. There is not the same swift movement that one experiences when skimming through the water rowed by a half-dozen muscular Maoris in their light-built canoes, or flying down rapids in a Canadian canoe, but in {59} place of it there is the calm repose of absolute security, and at times this latter condition is not to be scorned, especially when every moment you can see the fin of a shark rise out of the water. Clumsy looking as these boats are, it is wonderful what complete control the natives have over them, how swiftly they swing them round or skim them between dangerous rocks, and dash over the surf through waves that would swamp and capsize an average lifeboat. These irresponsible creatures paddle on through the worst of waters, laughing at the spray as it breaks over them, and shouting with glee as they mount the great waves, which carry them high and dry on to the shore.
Then the stately Lakatois with their queer-shaped sails, looking as unlike sails as the body of a boat is unlike a canoe. They resemble an elongated kite with a semicircle cut out of the top, and if you saw one for the first time coming towards you on a dark night, it would give you a fright, so grotesque and weird is it. In daylight, however, its horrors disappear and the ingeniousness of its construction appeals to you; after watching it sailing placidly out to sea, steered as easily as any yacht, a feeling of admiration for the savage inventor of it comes over you. {60}
To explain its construction would be a task too difficult for me, but, roughly, it consists of two or three large canoes lashed together and boarded over. On these boards is a kind of barn cut down and spread out considerably. This is used both for shelter and for carrying the pots and articles of barter. From the centre of this raft-like barge the two enormous sails project straight into the air; the two horn-like points of the top are decorated with long streamers; whilst others ornament the sails, making it look like a carnival barge. How the wind is caught or how the boats are moved about is a mystery to any but those who work them; if you ask a native he will explain it all to you: “He good fellow belong salt water, go easy.” And that is as much information as I can give. So with this vivid, though somewhat technical description of how the boat travels, you too must be satisfied, and look rather at its beauty than its ways of working.
OLD WOMEN MAKING POTTERY, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
The method of building canoes in these parts is interesting. A log of soft wood is obtained from an up-country tribe in exchange for fish or some other produce, and its outside is shaped by means of an ordinary English axe, while the inside is hewn out with the native stone adzes. These {61} they still prefer for delicate work, though they often attach the head of them to an ordinary axe handle. When a sufficiently deep hollow is made, the native lights a fire in it and works it about until the rough edges are smoothed down and other faults are rectified.