The canoes that we saw when we advanced farther to the northward, are not made of bark, but of the trunk of a tree hollowed, perhaps by fire. They are about fourteen feet long, and, being very narrow, are fitted with an outrigger to prevent their oversetting. These are worked with paddles, that are so large as to require both hands to manage one of them: the outside is wholly unmarked by any tool, but at each end the wood is left longer at the top than at the bottom, so that there is a projection beyond the hollow part resembling the end of a plank; the sides are tolerably thin, but how the tree is felled and fashioned, we had no opportunity to learn. The only tools that we saw among them are an adze, wretchedly made of stone, some small pieces of the same substance in form of a wedge, a wooden mallet, and some shells and fragments of coral. For polishing their throwing sticks, and the points of their lances, they use the leaves of a kind of wild fig-tree, which bites upon wood almost as keenly as the shave-grass of Europe, which is used by our joiners: with such tools, the making even such a canoe as I have described, must be a most difficult and tedious labour: to those who have been accustomed to the use of metal, it appears altogether impracticable; but there are few difficulties, that will not yield to patient perseverance, and be who does all he can, will certainly produce effects that greatly exceed his apparent power.

Voyaging Accounts