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Updated: April 30, 2025
Here there are houses and fires, lively people who shout and play merrily, and after the loneliness which blows chill from the bush, the traveller is glad to rest and feel at home among cheerful fellow-men. About seventy outrigger boats of all sizes lie on the beach. On their bows they carry a carved heron, probably some half-forgotten totem.
Medenham bent to it, and the outrigger traveled downstream at a rare pace. Cynthia steered with fair accuracy by the track they had followed against the current, but the oarsman glanced over his shoulder occasionally, and advised her as to the probable trend of the channel. "Keep a bit wide here," he said when they were approaching a sharp bend.
Of thinnest of firm-woven black wool, with white trimmings and a white belt-line, it was high-throated, short-sleeved, and brief- skirted. Brief as was the skirt, the leg-tights were no less brief. Yet on the beach in front of the adjacent Outrigger Club, and entering and leaving the water, a score of women, not provoking gasping notice, were more daringly garbed.
An outrigger attached to one side serves to balance them in the water. A fine smooth road built on an embankment of stone and earth leads across this marsh to a strip of higher land near the sea where the prison buildings stand. They are of gray stone, with miniature towers, surrounded by a wall capped with stone, the whole surmounted by a tower from which waves the Hawaiian flag.
On a second run, with 230 lbs. steam pressure the machine seemed to alternate between adherence to the lower and upper tracks, as many as three of the outrigger wheels engaging at the same time, and the weight on the steel rails being reduced practically to nothing.
Latterly they seldom built anything larger than a single canoe, with an outrigger, which might carry from fifteen to twenty people. Within the last few years the native carpenters have tried their hand at boat-building, and it is astonishing to see how well they have succeeded in copying the model of an English or American whaleboat, sharp at both ends, or having "two bows," as they call it.
Four men went in the canoe; one steering with a paddle in the stern, one paddling on either side, and one in the fore-part looking out for the turtle and attending to the fishing lines, while I sat on a sort of stage fixed midship supported by the outrigger poles.
These boats are very long and narrow, with an enormous outrigger and large sail, and when it is very rough, nearly the whole of the crew of the boat go out one by one, and sit on the outrigger to keep it in the water, from which springs the Cingalese saying, 'One man, two men, four men breeze. The heat was intense, though there was a pleasant breeze under the awning on deck; we therefore amused ourselves by looking over the side and bargaining with the natives, until our letters, which we had sent for, arrived.
On the other side of the lake were several curious houses built on long poles in the water, the houses themselves being a good height above the water. The lake presented a scene of great confusion. The inhabitants were fleeing away from us in their curious canoes, which, unlike most Papuan canoes, had no outrigger whatever. Their paddles also were peculiar, the blades being very broad.
He won't be back till nine o'clock to-night, perhaps. I never heard of such a thing. Which is it?" "That one with the lady in the stern the red parasol." "He must be caught up, he must. Have you got an outrigger?" Assuring Lizzie that he would be back in less than half an hour, Frank bent to his work. "If he rows like that he will run down some one," muttered the boatman.
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