Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places, New Zealand, page 227

Page 227

Joseph Banks's Descriptions of Places

New Zealand

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New Zealand (continued)

of Sails and indeed never unless when they were to go right before the wind. They were made of mat and instead of a mast were hoisted upon two sticks which were fastned one to each side, so that they requird two ropes which answerd the purpose of sheets and were fastned to the tops of these sticks; in this clumsey manner they saild with a good deal of swiftness and were steerd by two men who sat in the stern with each a paddle in his hand. I shall set down the dimensions of one that we measurd that was of the largest size: it was in lengh 68½feet, breadth 5, depth 3½; this was the only one that we measurd or indeed had an opportunity of measuring.

For the beauty of their carving in general I fain would say something more about it but find myself much inferior to the task. I shall therefore content myself with saying that their taste varied into two materialy different Stiles, I will call them. One was intirely formd of a number of Spirals diff[er]ently connected, the other was in a much more wild taste and I may truly say was like nothing but itself. Of the former the truth with which the lines were drawn was surprizing, but above all their method of connecting several spirals into one peice, which they did inimitably well, intermingling

Voyaging Accounts

© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 197, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-227.html