South Sea Islands
Index
Search
Contact us
that; they are built of Poles stuck upright in the ground and tied together at the top so that they make a kind of Gothick arch; the sides of these are compleatly coverd with Thatch down to the ground but the ends are left open. One of these I measurd, 50 paces in lengh, 10 in breadth and 24 feet high, and this was of the midling size.
The people excell much in predicting the weather, a circumstance of great use to them in their short voyages from Island to Island. They have many various ways of doing this but one only that I know of which I never heard of being practisd by Europaeans, that is foretelling the quarter of the heavens from whence the wind shall blow by observing the Milky Way, which is generaly bent in an arch either one way or the other: this arch they conceive as already acted upon by the wind, which is the cause of its curving, and say that if the same curve continues a whole night the wind predicted by it seldom fails to come some time in the next day; and in this as well as their other predictions we found them indeed not infallible but far more clever than Europaeans.
In their longer Voyages they steer in the day
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol.1) 401, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-154.html