the feathers of the tropic bird,
which have been before described, and some had a piece of white or
lead-coloured cloth wound about the head like a small turban, which our
people thought more becoming.

Their arms were long lances, made of the etoa, the wood of which is very
hard; they were well polished and sharpened at one end: some were near
twenty feet long, though not more than three fingers thick; they had
also a weapon which was both club and pike, made of the same wood, about
seven feet long; this also was well polished, and sharpened at one end
into a broad point. As a guard against these weapons, when they attack
each other, they have matts folded up many times, which they place under
their clothes from the neck to the waist: The weapons themselves indeed
are capable of much less mischief than those of the same kind which we
saw at the other islands, for the lances were there pointed with the
sharp bone of the stingray that is called the sting, and the pikes were
of much greater weight. The other things that we saw here were all
superior in their kind to any we had seen before; the cloth was of a
better colour in the dye, and painted with greater neatness and taste;
the clubs were better cut and polished, and the canoe, though a small
one, was very rich in ornament, and the carving was executed in a better
manner: Among other decorations peculiar to this canoe, was a line of
small white feathers, which bung from the head and stern on the outside,
and which, when we saw them, were thoroughly wetted by the spray.

Tupia told us, that there were several islands lying at different
distances, and in different directions from this, between the south and
the north-west; and that at the distance of three days sail to the
north-east, there was an island called _Manua_, Bird-island: He seemed,
however, most desirous that we should sail to the westward, and
described several islands in that direction which he said he had
visited: He told us that he had been ten or twelve days in going
thither, and thirty in coming back, and that the _pahie_ in which he had
made the voyage, sailed much faster than the ship: Reckoning his pahie
therefore to go at the rate of forty leagues a-day, which from my own
observation I have great reason to think these boats will do, it would
make four hundred leagues in ten days, which I compute to be the
distance of Boscawen and Keppel's Islands, discovered by Captain Wallis,
westward of Ulietea,