PLAN OF PIRON ISLAND CANOE.
CANOES OF ROSSEL ISLAND DESCRIBED.
Among the canoes which visited the ship one was of a quite different construction from the rest and resembled some of those which we had seen while passing along the northern side of Rossel Island. It contained seven men, and came from the eastward--probably from Piron Island. The body of a canoe of this class is formed like the other, or more common kind, of the hollowed out trunk of a large tree, tapering to a point and rising slightly at the ends, which, however, are alike and covered over by a close-fitting piece of wood, each end being thus converted into a hollow cone. The sides are raised by a plank two feet high and end-boards forming a kind of long box, with the seams pitched over. One side is provided with an outrigger similar to that already described, and on the other is a small stage, level with the gunwale, six feet long, planked over, and projecting four feet or thereabouts. The mast is a standing one stepped into a board in the bottom--it is lashed to a stout transverse pole, and is further supported by two fore and aft stays. The halyards reeve through a hole in a projecting arm a foot long at the masthead. But the sail forms the most curious feature in the whole affair.* It measures about fifteen feet in width by eight in depth and is made of rather fine matting stretched between two yards and rounded at the sides. The sail when not in use is rolled up and laid along the platform--when hoisted it stretches obliquely upwards across the mast, confined by the stays, with the lower and foremost corner resting on the stage and the tack secured to the foot of the mast. Both ends being alike, the mast central, and the sail large and manageable, a canoe of this description is well adapted for working to windward. Tacking is simply and expeditiously performed by letting go the tack, hauling upon the sheet, and converting one into the other. The large steering paddles are eight or nine feet long, with an oblong rounded blade of half that length.
(*Footnote. The annexed illustration represents this kind of sail--it was not however taken from the canoe in question, but on a subsequent occasion, and at another part of the Louisiade Archipelago.)
LARGE CANOE OF THE LOUISIADE.
WATERING-CREEK ON SOUTH-EAST ISLAND. ITS SCENERY.
June 26th.
Yesterday afternoon the Rattlesnake was removed to the neighbourhood of the proposed watering-place on South-east Island, and anchored in seventeen fathoms, mud, a mile off shore. Soon after daylight I accompanied Captain Stanley and a party in two boats to ascend the neighbouring creek and determine whether a practicable watering-place existed there. For several hundred yards above the entrance we found the channel preserving a nearly uniform width of about fifteen yards, with low muddy shores covered with mangroves, some of which attained the unusual dimensions of 60 to 80 feet in height, with a circumference at the base of 6 to 8 feet.