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Native of Ualan. (Fac-simile of early engraving.) |
After leaving Ualan, Lütke had a vain search for the Musgrave Islands, marked on Kruzenstern's map, and soon discovered a large island, surrounded by a coral reef, which had escaped the notice of Duperrey, and is known as Puinipet, or Pornabi. Some very large and fine canoes, each manned by fourteen men, and some smaller ones, worked by two natives only, soon surrounded the vessel. Their inmates, with fierce faces and blood-shot eyes, were noisy and blustering, and did a good deal of shouting, gesticulating, and dancing before they could make up their minds to trust themselves on board the Seniavine.
It would have been impossible to land, except by force, as the native canoes completely surrounded the vessel, and when an attempt at disembarkation was made, the savages surrounded the ship's boat, only retiring before the warlike attitude of the sailors and a volley from the guns of the Seniavine.
Lütke had not time to examine thoroughly his discovery, to which he gave the name of the Seniavine Archipelago. The information he collected on the people of the Puinipet Islands is, therefore, not very trustworthy. According to him they do not belong to the same race as those of Ualan, but resemble rather the Papuans, the nearest of whom are those of New Ireland, seven hundred miles away.
After another vain search, this time for Saint Augustine's Island, he sighted the Cora of Los Vaherites, also called Seven, or Raven Island, discovered in 1773 by the Spaniard Felipe Tompson.
The navigator next saw the Mortlock Archipelago, the old Lugunor group, known to Torrés as the Lugullos, the people of which resemble those of Ualan. He landed on the principal of these islands, which he found to be one huge garden of cocoa palms and breadfruit-trees.
The natives enjoy a centre degree of civilization. They weave and dye the fibres of the banana and cocoa-nut palms, as do those of Ualan and Puinipet. Their fishing-tackle does credit to their inventive faculties, especially a sort of case constructed of small sticks and split bamboo-canes, which the fish cannot get out of when once in. They also use nets of the shape of large wallets, lines, and harpoons.
Their canoes, in which they spend more than half their lives, are wonderfully adapted to their requirements. The large ones, which are a very great trouble to build, and which are kept in sheds constructed specially for them, are twenty-six feet long, two and a half wide, and four deep. They are furnished with gimbals, the cross-pieces being connected by a rafter. On the other side there is a small platform, four feet square, and furnished with a roof, under which they are accustomed to keep their provisions. These pirogues have a triangular sail, which is made of matting woven from bandanus leaves, and is attached to two yards. In tacking about they drop the sail, and turn the mast towards the other end of the canoe, to which, at the same time, they have passed the fastening of the sail, so that the pirogue moves forward by its other extremity.
Lütke next sighted the Namuluk group, the inhabitants of which do not differ at all from the people of Lugunor, and he proved the identity of Hogolu Island—already described by Duperrey—with Quirosa. He then visited the Namnuïto group, the first stratum of a number of islands, or of one large island which will some day exist in this part of the world.