FEEJEE ISLAND CANOE.
"The people of the Feejee Islands make their boats on a combination of the two systems. They have the outrigger principle in place of that of the double canoe, but they make the outrigger hollow, and use it for stowing cargo; and in large canoes it is the home of a part of the crew. Then they have the platform, as in the case of the double canoe, and sometimes they have a sort of upper deck, or pilot-house, on the platform, where the captain stands to direct the movements of the craft. All these forms of boats are steered by means of paddles, and not with a rudder."
"I wonder somebody in the civilized world does not take something from these savages in the way of boat-building," said Frank, as soon as the Doctor paused. "Seems to me there is a good deal in these ideas of the double canoe, and the way they manage them."
"A great many persons have wondered as you do," the Doctor answered; "and some have ceased wondering, and tried the principles on both small and large craft. A few years ago one of the races of the New York Yacht Club was won by a boat on the double-canoe principle, and since then several of these boats have been built with different degrees of success. In England a steamer called the Castalia was built for crossing the channel between Dover and Calais, but she proved to be very slow in spite of her enormous engines, which were intended to propel her not less than twenty miles an hour. The chief defect in her construction was that she was built like two complete boats placed side by side, whereas she should have been shaped like a single boat that had been sawed in two from one end to the other. The water is ploughed off from the bows of a boat, as you can see at any time, and when two boats are close to each other and parallel, the water is banked up between them and retards their progress; but where a double boat is built as I have suggested, and as the South Sea Islanders build them, the case is different, and the two hulls glide as smoothly as though they were only one.
AMERICAN MODIFICATION OF A SAVAGE BOAT.