fastened in their ancient style, with cinnet plaited from the fibre of
the cocoa-nut husk. Cinnet is likely long to prevail in _native_ canoe
and boat-building. Although it looks clumsy, it has the advantage of
not rotting the wood like an iron nail. It is durable also. With care,
and the sewing once or twice renewed, a Samoan canoe or boat will last
ten or twenty years.

They did not paint their canoes, but decorated them with rows of white
shells (_Cypræa ovula_) running along the middle of the deck at the
bow and stern, and also along the upper part of the outrigger. Now and
then they had a figure-head with some rude device of a human figure, a
dog, a bird, or something else, which had from time immemorial been
the "coat-of-arms" of the particular village or district to which the
canoe belonged. A chief of importance must also have one, or perhaps
two, large shells in his canoe, to answer the purpose of trumpets, to
blow now and then as the canoe passed along. It attracted the
attention of the villagers, and called them out to look and inquire,
"Who is that?" The ambition to see and to be seen was as common in
Polynesia as anywhere else. As the canoe approached any principal
settlement, or when it reached its destination, there was a special
too-too-too, or flourish of their shell trumpets, to herald its
approach. The paddlers at the same time struck up some lively chant,
and, as the canoe touched the beach, all was wound up with a united
shout, having more of the _yell_ in it, but the same in meaning as a
"hip, hip, hurrah!"

The French navigator Bougainville, seeing the Samoans so often moving
about in their canoes, named the group "The Navigators." A stranger in
the distance, judging from the name, may suppose that the Samoans are
noted among the Polynesians as enterprising navigators. This is not