water are always at hand.

Their greatest exploit, to which these tools are less equal than to any
other, is felling a tree: This requires many hands, and the constant
labour of several days. When it is down, they split it, with the grain,
into planks from three to four inches thick, the whole length and
breadth of the tree, many of which are eight feet in the girt, and forty
to the branches, and nearly of the same thickness throughout. The tree
generally used, is, in their language, called _avie_, the stem of which
is tall and straight; though some of the smaller boats are made of the
bread-fruit tree, which is a light spongy wood, and easily wrought. They
smooth the plank very expeditiously and dexterously with their adzes,
and can take off a thin coat from a whole plank without missing a
stroke. As they have not the art of warping a plank, every part of the
canoe, whether hollow or flat, is shaped by hand.[19]

[Footnote 19: One likes to see the exercise of human ingenuity even on
trifles. It flatters the consciousness of one's own powers, and affords,
too, the ground-work of a comparison nowise disadvantageous to what one
believes of his own capabilities. Man has been defined by a certain
writer, an animal that uses instruments for the accomplishment of his
purposes. But the definition is faulty in one important point; it does
not exclude some beings which are not of the species. It is perhaps
impossible to furnish an adequate definition of his nature within the
compass of a single logical proposition. And what matter? Every man in
his senses knows what man is, and can hardly ever be necessitated to
clothe his conception of him, in language metaphysically
unexceptionable. But if any trait be more characteristic than another,
that of invention may safely be asserted to have the pre-eminence. Man,
in effect, evinces the superiority of his nature over all other animals,