CANOES.
Next to a well-built house, Samoan ingenuity was seen in their canoes.
Any one could fell a tree, cut off the branches, and hollow out the
log some fifteen feet long, for a common fishing canoe in which one or
two men can sit. But the more carefully-built canoe, with a number of
separate planks raised from a keel, was the work of a distinct and not
very numerous class of professed carpenters. The keel was laid in one
piece, twenty-five to fifty feet long, as the size of the canoe might
be, and to that they added board after board, not by overlapping and
nailing, but by _sewing_ each close to its fellow, until they had
raised it some two, or, it might be, three feet from the ground. These
boards were not sawn, squared, and uniform, but were a number of
pieces, or _patches_, as they are called, varying in size from
eighteen inches to five feet long, as the wood split up from the log
with felling axes happens to suit; all, however, were well fastened
together, and, with the help of a little gum of the bread-fruit tree
for pitch, the whole was perfectly water-tight. In dressing each
board, they left a ledge, or rim, all round the edge, which was to be
inside, making it double the thickness at the edge to what it was in
the middle of the board. It is through this ledge or rim they bored
the holes, and with a few turns of cinnet sewed tight one board to the
other. The sewing only appeared on the inside. Outside all was smooth
and neat; and it was only on close inspection you could see that there
was a join at all. They had timbers, thwarts, and gunwale, to keep all
tight; and over a few feet at the bow and the stern they had a deck,
under which they could stow away anything. The decked part at the bow
was the seat of honour, and there you generally saw the chief of the
travelling party sitting cross-legged, at his ease, while the others
were paddling.
The width of a canoe varied from eighteen to thirty inches; the
length, from fifteen to fifty feet. But for an outrigger, it was
impossible to keep such a long, narrow thing steady in the water. The
outrigger may be described, in any boat, by laying oars across at
equal distances, say one right above a thwart. Make fast the handle of
each oar to the gunwale on the starboard side of the boat, and let the
oars project on the larboard side. To the end of each projecting oar
make fast four small sticks running down towards the water, and let
their ends also be fastened to a long thick piece of wood, sharp at
the one end to cut through the water, and floating on the surface
parallel to the boat. This being done will give any one an exact idea
of a Polynesian outrigger, by means of which long narrow canoes are
kept steady in the water.
Some people who sketch and engrave from imagination, err in
representing the natives of Samoa as _pulling_ their short paddles, as
the European boatman pulls his long oars. The paddle is about four
feet long, something like a sharp-pointed shovel; and when the natives
paddle, they sit with their faces in the direction in which the canoe
is going, "_dig_" in their paddles, send the water flying behind them,
and forward the canoe shoots at the rate of seven miles an hour. They
have always a sail for their canoe, as well as paddles, to take
advantage of a fair wind. The sail is triangular, and made of matting.
When set, the base is up, and the apex down, quite the reverse of what
we see in some other islands. The _mat_ sails, however, are giving
place to cloth ones, made in the form of European boat-sails.
Some two or three generations back the Samoans built large double
canoes like the Fijians. Latterly they seldom built anything larger
than a single canoe, with an outrigger, which might carry from fifteen
to twenty people. Within the last few years the native carpenters have
tried their hand at boat-building, and it is astonishing to see how
well they have succeeded in copying the model of an English or
American whaleboat, sharp at both ends, or having "two bows," as they
call it. Some of them are fifty feet long, and carry well on to one
hundred people. From stem to stern there is not a nail; everything is
fastened in their ancient style, with cinnet plaited from the fibre of
the cocoa-nut husk. Cinnet is likely long to prevail in _native_ canoe
and boat-building. Although it looks clumsy, it has the advantage of
not rotting the wood like an iron nail. It is durable also. With care,
and the sewing once or twice renewed, a Samoan canoe or boat will last
ten or twenty years.
They did not paint their canoes, but decorated them with rows of white
shells (_Cypræa ovula_) running along the middle of the deck at the
bow and stern, and also along the upper part of the outrigger. Now and
then they had a figure-head with some rude device of a human figure, a
dog, a bird, or something else, which had from time immemorial been
the "coat-of-arms" of the particular village or district to which the
canoe belonged. A chief of importance must also have one, or perhaps
two, large shells in his canoe, to answer the purpose of trumpets, to
blow now and then as the canoe passed along. It attracted the
attention of the villagers, and called them out to look and inquire,
"Who is that?" The ambition to see and to be seen was as common in
Polynesia as anywhere else. As the canoe approached any principal
settlement, or when it reached its destination, there was a special
too-too-too, or flourish of their shell trumpets, to herald its
approach. The paddlers at the same time struck up some lively chant,
and, as the canoe touched the beach, all was wound up with a united
shout, having more of the _yell_ in it, but the same in meaning as a
"hip, hip, hurrah!"
The French navigator Bougainville, seeing the Samoans so often moving
about in their canoes, named the group "The Navigators." A stranger in
the distance, judging from the name, may suppose that the Samoans are
noted among the Polynesians as enterprising navigators. This is not
the case. They are quite a domestic people, and rarely venture out of
sight of land. The group, however, is extensive, and gives them some
scope for travel. It numbers ten inhabited islands, and stretches east
and west about 200 miles. Within these bounds they have kept up an
intercourse from the earliest times in their history, which is fully
proved, not only by tradition, but by the uniformity of customs and
language which prevails from the one end of the group to the other.