1770 WEAPONS 319 had generally simple points of wood; or if they were barbed, it was with only one splinter of wood. The instrument with which they threw them was a plain stick or piece of wood 2 or 3 feet in length, at one end of which was a small knob or hook, and near the other a kind of cross-piece to hinder it from slipping out of their hands. With this contrivance, simple as it is, and ill-fitted for that purpose, they throw the lances forty yards or more with a swiftness and steadiness truly surprising. The knob being hooked into a small dent made in the top of the lance, they hold it over their shoulder, and shaking it an instant, as if balancing it, throw it with the greatest ease imaginable. The neatest of these throwing sticks that we saw was made of a hard reddish wood, polished and shining: the sides were flat and about two inches in breadth, and the handle, or part to keep it from dropping out of the hand, covered with thin layers of very white polished bone. These I believe to be the things which many of our people were deceived by, imagining them to be wooden swords, clubs, etc., according to the direction in which they happened to see them. Defensive weapons we saw only in Sting-ray's Bay and there only a single instance: a man who attempted to oppose our landing came down to the beach with a shield of an oblong shape about 3 feet long and 1 broad, made of the bark of This he left behind when he ran away, and we found upon taking it up that it had plainly been pierced through with a single-pointed lance near the centre. That such shields were frequently used in that neighbourhood we had, however, sufficient proof, often seeing upon trees the places from whence they had been cut, and sometimes the shields themselves cut out but not yet taken from the tree, the edges of the bark only being a little raised with wedges. This shows that these people certainly know how much thicker and stronger bark becomes by being suffered to remain upon the tree some time after it is cut round. a tree. That they are a very pusillanimous people we had reason to suppose from their conduct in every place where we were, except at Sting-ray's Bay, and then only two people opposed the landing of our two boats full of men for nearly a quarter of an hour, and were not to be driven away until several times wounded with small shot, which we were obliged to do, as at that time we suspected their lances to be poisoned, from the quantity of gum which was about their points. But upon every other occasion, both there and everywhere else, they behaved alike, shunning us, and giving up any part of the country we landed upon at once. That they use stratagems in war we learnt by the instance in Sting-ray's Bay, where our surgeon with another man was walking in the woods and met six Indians: they stood still, but directed another who was up a tree how and when he should throw a lance at them, which he did, and on its not taking effect they all ran away as fast as possible. Their canoes were the only things in which we saw a manifest difference between the southern and northern people. Those to the southward were little better contrived or executed than their houses; a piece of bark tied together in plaits at the ends, and kept extended in the middle by small bows of wood, was the whole embarkation which carried one or two people, nay, we once saw three, who moved it along in shallow water with long poles, and in deeper with paddles about eighteen inches long, one of which they held in each hand. In the middle of these canoes was generally a small fire upon a heap of seaweed, for what purpose intended we did not know, except perhaps to give the fisherman an opportunity of eating fish in perfection, by broiling it the moment it is taken. To the northward their canoes, though exceedingly bad, were far superior to these; they were small, but regularly hollowed out of the trunk of a tree, and fitted with an outrigger to prevent them from upsetting. In these they had paddles large enough to require both hands to work them. Of this sort we saw few, and had an opportunity of examining only one of them, which might be about ten or eleven feet long, but was 1770 CANOES 321 extremely narrow. The sides of the tree were left in their natural state untouched by tools, but at each end they had cut away from the under part, and left part of the upper side overhanging. The inside also was not badly hollowed, and the sides tolerably thin. We had many times an opportunity of seeing what burthen it was capable of carrying. Three people, or at most four, were as many as dare venture in it; and if any others wanted to cross the river, which in that place was about half a mile broad, one of these would take the canoe back and fetch them. That This was the only piece of workmanship which I saw among the New Hollanders that seemed to require tools. How they had hollowed her out or cut the ends I cannot guess, but upon the whole the work was not ill done. Indian patience might do a good deal with shells, etc., without the use of stone axes, which, if they had them, they would probably have used to form her outside. such a canoe takes much time and trouble to make may be concluded from our seeing so few, and still more from the moral certainty which we have that the tribe which visited us, consisting to our knowledge of twenty-one people, and possibly of several more, had only one such belonging to them. How tedious it must be for these people to be ferried over a river a mile or two wide by threes and fours at a time; how well, therefore, worth the pains for them to stock themselves better with boats if they could do it. I am inclined to believe that, besides these canoes, the northern people make use of the bark canoe of the south. I judge from having seen one of the small paddles left by them upon a small island where they had been fishing for turtle it lay upon a heap of turtle shells and bones, trophies of the good living they had had when there. With it lay the broken staff of a turtle peg and a rotten line, tools which had been worn out, I suppose, in the service of catching them. We had great reason to believe that at some season of the year the weather is much more moderate than we found it, otherwise the Indians could never have ventured in any canoes that we saw half so far from the Y mainland as were islands on which we saw evident marks of their having been, such as decayed houses, fires, the beforementioned turtle bones, etc. Maybe, at this more moderate time, they make and use such canoes, and when the blustering season comes on, may convert the bark of which they were made to the purposes of covering houses, waterbuckets, etc., well knowing that when the next returns they will not want for a supply of bark to rebuild their vessels. Another reason we have to imagine that such a moderate season exists, and that the winds are [not] then upon the eastern board as we found them is, that whatever Indian houses or sleeping places we saw on these islands were built upon the summit of small hills, if there were any, or if not, in places where no bushes or wood could intercept the course of the wind, and their shelter was always turned to the eastward. On the main, again, their houses were universally built in valleys or under the shelter of trees which might defend them from the very winds, which in the islands they exposed themselves to. Of their language I can say very little; our acquaintance with them was of so short a duration that none of us attempted to use a single word of it to them, consequently words could be learned in no other manner than by signs, inquiring of them what in their language signified such a thing, a method obnoxious as leading to many mistakes. For instance, a man holds in his hand a stone and asks the name of it, the Indian may return him for answer either the real name of a stone, or one of the properties of it, as hardness, roughness, smoothness, etc., or one of its uses, or the name peculiar to some particular species of stone, which name the inquirer immediately sets down as that of a stone. To avoid, however, as much as possible this inconvenience, myself and two or three others got from them as many words as we could, and having noted down those which we thought from circumstances we were not mistaken in, we compared our lists; those in which all agreed, or rather were contradicted by none, we thought ourselves morally certain not to be mistaken in. They very |