Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/315

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xvi.]
Canoes.
293

tied to a horn, tiqa-taso, at the stern. The whole safety of the vessel depended on the strength and elasticity of the attachment of the outrigger to the hull. In former times the work of shaping the body of the canoe and adzing out the planks with which the sides were raised was done with shell adzes; and the holes for the lashings were bored with the columella of a volute shell. A large canoe was owned in common by several men, or by one very important person; money was paid for hire and freight. All canoes of any size


Santa Cruz Canoe.

had names; when a new canoe came for the first time to land away from home the crew was pelted in a friendly way[1].

The Santa Cruz canoes, of better workmanship and form, are substantially the same as these; the large sea-going canoes, loju, carry a large stage on either side above a very

  1. In the Torres Islands of late years there were no canoes; the people were reduced to use catamarans of bamboo, if they wished to cross from one to another island. Their canoe-makers had died out, and they, very characteristically, acquiesced, as at Lakona also they did for a time, in going without.