lf in greatest width, and could
carry with ease twenty-five people.

(*Footnote. At the latter place we found a small canoe with two
outriggers concealed on shore among some bushes. The bark canoes of
Rockingham Bay have already been described. About Whitsunday Passage the
canoes, also of bark, are larger and of neater construction: one which I
examined at the Cumberland Isles was made of three pieces of bark neatly
sewn together; it was six feet long and two and a half feet wide, sharp
at each end, with a wooden thwart near the stem and stern, and a cord
amidships to keep the sides from stretching. In the creeks and bays of
the now settled districts of New South Wales another kind of canoe was
once in general use. At Broken Bay, in August 1847, a singular couple of
aborigines whom I met upon a fishing excursion had a small canoe formed
of a single sheet of bark tied up at each end; on the floor of this they
were squatted, with the gunwale not more than six inches above the
water's edge. Yet this frail bark contained a fire, numbers of spears,
fishing lines and other gear. The woman was a character well known in
Sydney--Old Gooseberry--said to be old enough to have remembered Cook's
first visit to these shores.)

MODE OF CONSTRUCTING AND MANAGING THEM.

The construction of a canoe in the neighbourhood of Cape York is still
looked upon as a great undertaking, although the labour has been much
lessened by the introduction of iron axes, which have completely
superseded those of stone formerly in use. A tree of sufficient size free
from limbs--usually a species of Bombax (silk-cotton tree) or
Erythrina--is selected in the scrub, cut down, hollowed out where it
falls, and dragged to the beach by means of long climbers used as ropes.
The remaining requisites are now added; two stout poles, fourteen to
twenty feet in length, are laid across the gunwale, and secured there
from six to ten feet apart, and the projecting ends are secured by
lashing and wooden pegs to a long float of light wood on each side,
pointed, and slightly turned up at the ends. A platform or stage of small
sticks laid across occupies the centre of the canoe, extending on each
side, several feet beyond the gunwale, and having on the outside a sort
of double fence of upright sticks used for stowing away weapons and other
gear. The paddles are five feet long, with a narrow rounded blade, and
are very clumsily made. The cable is made of twisted climbers--ofte