Page:The disappearance of useful arts.djvu/6

 110 that in two places in Oceania the canoe has once been present and has disappeared.

In the Torres Islands (not to be confused with the islands of Torres Straits) the people have at present no canoes and in order to pass over the narrow channels, which separate the islands of their group from one another, they use rude catamarans of bamboo. These craft are so unseaworthy that they are of little use for fishing; how little is shown by the fact that in order to catch the much prized un (the palolo of Polynesia) the people stand on the reefs and catch the worms with a net at the end of a long pole.

It is quite certain that we have not to do in this case with people who have never possessed the canoe. The Torres Islands form only an outlying group of the Banks Islands which in their turn form a continuous chain with the New Hebrides, and the general culture of the Torres islanders is so closely allied to that of neighbouring peoples and there is such definite tradition of intercourse with them that even if there were no more direct evidence we could be confident that the people must once have shared the prevailing outrigger canoe of this region with their neighbours. Direct evidence, however, is not wanting. Dr. Codrington records that the canoe-makers had died out and that the people had in consequence resigned themselves to doing without an art which must once have taken an important place in their daily avocations.

While the canoe has thus disappeared in the Torres group there is evidence that it has degenerated in the adjacent Banks Islands. The canoe of these islands is now a far less seaworthy and useful craft than it must once have been. There are clear traditions of former communications with the Torres and New Hebrides, if not with more distant