to them as to the southern sea-coast tribes of New Guinea or to the islanders of Torres Strait of the present time. There is no evidence of such a degeneration in culture, and before this belief can be accepted as a settled proposition, some evidence in support of it must be forthcoming.
It might, however, be urged that the tribes living on the east coast of Cape York Peninsula and of the Australian coast of Torres Strait, as far as Port Darwin, are acquainted with and use outrigger canoes, and therefore may represent the condition of the first arrivals. As to this, the observations of the earlier navigators, and especially of those engaged in surveying voyages, are much to the point.
Mr. M'Gillivray, speaking of the year 1847,[1] says that the canoes seen in Rockingham Bay were constructed of a single sheet of bark brought together at the ends and secured by stitching. Near Shelbourne Bay, on the east side of Cape York Peninsula, they were constructed of a tree trunk with a double outrigger, "and altogether a poor instance of these used by the islanders of Torres Strait." Further on, when at Cape York, he speaks of the ordinary outrigger canoe of the Straits, and of the friendly intercourse existing between the "natives of the southern portion of Torres Strait and those of the mainland about Cape York."[2]
These observations indicate the distance to which a knowledge of the outrigger canoe, derived from the islanders of the Straits, had passed southward at the time spoken of by Mr. M'Gillivray. To this may be added that according to oral information, for which I am indebted to Dr. R. L. Jack, the use of the outrigger canoe extends now as far southward as Hinchinbrook Island.
As to the knowledge of the outrigger canoe by the Australians on the western part of the shores of Torres Strait, Mr. M'Gillivray also mentions that two years after the founding of the English settlement at Raffles Bay in 1827, the Bugis had taken advantage of the protection afforded to carry on trepang fishing, and that formerly bark canoes had been in general use by the aborigines, but that
