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These, like the largest Ivahahs, are used for fighting; but principally for long voyages. The fighting Pahie, which is the largest, is fitted with the stage or platform, which is proportionably larger than those of the Ivahah, as their form enables them to sustain a much greater weight. Those that are used for sailing are generally double; and the middle size are said to be the best sea-boats.
Tupia told us, that there were several islands lying at different distances, and in different directions from this, between the south and the north-west; and that at the distance of three days sail to the north-east, there was an island called Manua, Bird-island: He seemed, however, most desirous that we should sail to the westward, and described several islands in that direction which he said he had visited: He told us that he had been ten or twelve days in going thither, and thirty in coming back, and that the pahie in which he had made the voyage, sailed much faster than the ship: Reckoning his pahie therefore to go at the rate of forty leagues a-day, which from my own observation I have great reason to think these boats will do, it would make four hundred leagues in ten days, which I compute to be the distance of Boscawen and Keppel's Islands, discovered by Captain Wallis, westward of Ulietea, and therefore think it very probable that they were the islands he had visited.
The fighting Pahie was often sixty feet long, and two were also joined together, with a large platform above them. One measured by Captain Cook was, though sixty feet long, only one foot and a half at the gunwale, with flat sides; then it abruptly widened out to three feet, and narrowed again to the keel. The double canoes were sometimes out a month together, going from island to island.
The canoes, or boats, which are used by the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring islands, may be divided into two general classes; one of which they call Ivahahs, the other Pahies. The Ivahah is used for short excursions to sea, and is wall-sided and flat-bottomed; the Pahie for longer voyages, and is bow-sided and sharp-bottomed.
Some carried one, some two masts, with sails of matting, of shoulder-of-mutton shape. The bottom of a large Pahie was formed of three or more trunks of trees secured together and hollowed out, above this flooring were the sides of plank, two inches thick, and about fifteen inches broad; and then there were the upper works, hollowed out of trunks of trees like the bottom.
Their axes were of different sizes, but even with the largest it took them several days to cut down a tree. The canoes were often large, and constructed with great labour and ingenuity. They were of two builds: one, the Ivaha, for short excursions, was wall-sided, with a flat bottom; the other, the Pahie, for longer voyages, was bow-sided, with a sharp bottom.
Those which are shorter than five-and-twenty feet, seldom or never carry sail; and, though the stern rises about four or five feet, have a flat head, and a board that projects forward about four feet. The Pahie is also of different sizes, from sixty to thirty feet long; but, like the Ivahah, is very narrow. One that I measured was fifty-one feet long, and only one foot and a half wide at the top.
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