Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/341

] We did not observe among those islanders any articles of European origin. As by this time, we bought scarcely any thing, they quitted our ship, and carried the rest of their manufactures alongside of the Esperance.

Their canoes are formed of the excavated trunk of a tree, with boards fitted to its sides. Their length is thirty-two feet, and their extreme breadth not more than twenty-six inches. Their sides are supported internally by cross boards, which form so many divisions, in the bottoms of which are the paddlers, towards the two extremities of the canoe.

Those canoes are furnished with an outrigger, about thirteen feet in length, which projects laterally and nearly at the same distance. On the opposite side is a counter-outrigger, which does not take the water, and which is eight feet in length. It serves as a place upon which to lay the sail; the commander sometimes sits upon it; but his station is commonly on an elevated platform or trellis, of the same extent as the outrigger.

The sail is a mat, in the form of a regular square, 13 feet in the side. Two opposite sides of it are fastened to poles of the same length, which serve for yards. When the sail is set, one of its diagonals is always vertical, and its upper angle is elevated three feet above the top of the mast, which is