cut away; the lobes
of the ears split, and stretched "to a good length." "They had no kind of
clothing, but wore necklaces of cowrie shells fastened to a braid of
fibres; and some of their companions had pearl-oyster shells hung round
their necks. In speaking to each other, their words seemed to be
distinctly pronounced. Their arms were bows, arrows, and clubs, which
they bartered for every kind of iron work with eagerness, but appeared to
set little value on anything else. The bows are made of split bamboo, and
so strong that no man in the ship could bend one of them. The string is a
broad slip of cane fixed to one end of the bow; and fitted with a noose
to go over the other end when strung. The arrow is a cane of about four
feet long, into which a pointed piece of the hard, heavy, casuarina wood
is firmly and neatly fitted; and some of them were barbed. Their clubs
are made of casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is
indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is
much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device. One
had the form of a parrots head, with a ruff round the neck, and was not
ill done.

"Their canoes are about fifty feet in length, and appear to have been
hollowed out of a single tree; and the pieces which form the gunwales are
planks sewed on with fibres of the cocoanut and secured with pegs. These
vessels are low forward, but rise abaft; and, being narrow, are fitted
with an outrigger on each side to keep them steady. A raft, of greater
breadth than the canoe, extends over about half the length, and upon this
is fixed a shed or hut, thatched with palm leaves. These people, in
short, appeared to be dexterous sailors and formidable warriors, and to
be as much at ease in the water as in their canoes."

On September 19th the two ships, with caution and perseverance, had
threaded their dangerous way through the intricate maze of reefs and
shoals of Torres Strait, and found open sea to the westward. In latitude
10 degrees 8 1/2 minutes "no land was in sight, nor did anything more
obstruct Captain Bligh and his associates in their route to the island
Timor."

It is easy to imagine the delight with which these experiences thrilled
the young midshipman on the Providence. His eighteenth birthday was spent
in the Pacific, in the early Autumn of a hemisphere where the sea was not
yet cloven by innumerable keels, and where beauty, enchantment and
mystery lay up